


The Long Way Back

by LikeSatellites



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - College/University, Bad Decisions, Drinking Games, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-05-23 03:55:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeSatellites/pseuds/LikeSatellites
Summary: He and Hoseok and Kihyun: they were always going to be pack. Always.But there, in the scent of Kihyun from across the room, Changkyun notes there aren’t any strong pheromones. Beneath the scent of clean, warm skin, there’s nothing. He's a Beta.And, if Changkyun has any lingering hopes for that future, Kihyun steps closer and crushes them further into the beautiful green earth. Letting them slowly burn up.A handshake.Six years later, and Changkyun gets a handshake from the boy who was supposed to be his mate. The boy who adamantly declared that he’d build their pack cabin with his bare-fuckin-hands because that’s what pack does.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I have 500 WIPs going right now, but I finished this little garbage heap and decided to post it so you all won't forget I exist  
> Please enjoy the beginning of this gratuitous pack fluff-smut mess I decided the fandom needs. Everyone fucks and is happy: the end.

If there’s one thing Changkyun knows, it’s that getting Jooheon to this Mu Chi Alpha party is going to be an  _ event _ . 

After class, Jooheon comes back to the Mu Chi Omega house in a huff, immediately ranting to Changkyun as he lays with his head hanging over the side of Jooheon’s twin bed, legs up against the wall adjacent. 

Jooheon throws his hipster burlap-looking book bag onto his desk chair, making it roll back a few inches under the weight of the textbooks. “It’s just!! Why is art history a required class? I’m a goddamn geology major, Changkyun. I study rocks. I study  _ dirt _ . Why do I need to know that some old white betas once pursued lives of artistry?”

Changkyun rolls over more properly on Jooheon’s bed and holds his arms out. Jooheon releases a little Omegean purring whimper and leaps up into Changkyun’s arms. He scents himself on Changkyun’s throat, behind his ear, and Changkyun shivers and clutches at him. 

“Know what would make you feel better?” Changkyun coos in a whisper, lips pressed to the top of Jooheon’s sweet-smelling hair. Jooheon has always smelled like baby powder and oranges. Like something homey, clean, and bright. 

Jooheon hums, licking at Changkyun’s ear and nipping the skin, his tense body going lax slowly as Changkyun holds him. 

“Going with me to the Mu Chi Alpha party tonight,” Changkyun says, as if he were saying  _ Stay in and order Chinese.  _

For a moment, Jooheon doesn’t respond, too caught up in scenting Changkyun, but then he pulls back with a low growling, “ _ Changkyun Im,  _ fucking  _ no _ .”

Changkyun clutches Jooheon tightly to him with arms around his soft middle, as Jooheon struggles and wriggles and gurgles a pathetic little growl. 

“It’ll be  _ fun _ ! You like the Mu Chi Alphas! Hyunwoo is great!”

“I’ve met him all of maybe three times, and one of them was when I was picking your drunk ass up from their party because none of their guys were sober enough to walk you home,” Jooheon whines, pressing his face into his own pillow. His words sound like they’re coming from miles away as he adds, “And you know I can’t stand alphas.”

Changkyun flips them so Jooheon is on his back under Changkyun, and Changkyun licks and nips at Jooheon’s scent gland until Jooheon goes limp and lax against the mattress. “I promise I won’t abandon you. We’ll get some cute clothes on, hm? And we’ll just go and check it out. Hyungwon is going to meet us there after theater practice. So please? Please, please, please?”

“I don’t have cute clothes, and nothing looks good on me,” Jooheon sniffles, so Changkyun pinches his lips together. 

“None of that, my precious baby bumblebee. You’re the hottest piece of Omega ass this school has ever seen.”

“Uh, according to who?”

“ _ Whom _ . And according to literally every book about Omegas. Alphas have always wanted their Omegas to be soft and sweet and _ grip-able _ ,” Changkyun explains, clenching his fingers in the air over Jooheon’s face and then moving them to literally grip the thick softness at Jooheon’s hips.

“That was eons ago, Changkyun. Now Alphas want Omegas like Mina or Hyungwon. Classically beautiful. No one cares about looking  _ fertile _ ,” Jooheon huffs. 

“Bull. They pretend they want those model Omegas, but all their instincts tell them they want you.”

“Great. I love to be lusted after by primal alpha jerks,” Jooheon scoffs. 

Changkyun sits back on his haunches and grabs Jooheon by the arms, hauling him up. “Let’s go. I’m gonna squeeze you into some tight jeans and play up this  _ gold _ that you always hide,” he says, grabbing a fistful of Jooheon’s upper thigh and smacking his ass after. 

“If you abandon me at this party Changkyun Im, I swear to Mother Earth,” Jooheon hisses, as Changkyun throws open their shared closet. 

“I would  _ never _ .”

Jooheon looks like, were he not completely drained of all energy, he’d launch himself out of bed and bite Changkyun’s lying lips clean off. The good thing about being Changkyun is that nothing fazes him -- not heights, not spiders, and especially not Jooheon Lee. (Ok, spiders a little).

And so, roughly forty minutes later, Changkyun has Jooheon hopping up and down to squeeze himself into Changkyun’s skinny, ripped black jeans, the rips spreading wider with the power of Jooheon’s meaty thighs. Changkyun has always envied in Jooheon the ability to carry weight in the ideal Omega places. 

Changkyun is of the mind that even if Alphas and Omegas pretend they’ve evolved past their more base, animalistic instincts, there will always be that gnawing feeling, like molars chomping at your ribs, that maybe we can never really escape them.

The Mu Chi Alpha house feels like the inside of a mouth after six shots of vodka from a plastic bottle. It’s humid, sticky, and smells like pheromones and cheap booze. And, Mother Goddess above, Changkyun loves it. He loves how  _ real _ it smells. Everyone’s natural scents seeping out through their pores in the heat, in the thrill of it all. 

Changkyun flashes his school ID to the campus Alpha assigned to watch the door. A pack-less Alpha, so he won’t feel bad about taking down some Mu Chi Alpha bro if something bad happens. Don’t want to start a pack war over some spilled tequila.

Jooheon is clutching Changkyun’s arm desperately, wincing at the bevy of powerful scents. Jooheon isn’t often around this many Alphas. To be fair, only the Mu Chi Alphas are allowed at Mu Chi Alpha parties, unless you somehow get onto their guest list. Betas and Omegas are always allowed. Sometimes makes the parties a weird kind of mating dance where all the 100+ Omegas are preening for the attention of about 20 Alphas and the Betas are just trying to get some free booze. 

Changkyun walks up to where Hyungwon is grabbing drinks from Hyunwoo at the makeshift bar in the frat kitchen. Hyunwoo is, in Changkyun’s opinion, the Alpha his parents always dreamed he’d end up with. A good, reliable, loyal, big Alpha man. The Golden Retriever of Alphas. Throw a stick coated in peanut butter, and Hyunwoo would bring it right back to you, licking peanut butter from his big golden fingers.

Changkyun has fucked Hyunwoo, and they’re cool with one another, but Changkyun has higher aspirations than just A Good Alpha. 

“Yo,” Changkyun greets, grabbing a cup of something from the bar and sniffing it with a grimace. “Orange soda? Really?”

Hyunwoo shrugs, big shoulders droopy. “Minhyuk was on drink duty. It was either this or some weird Lychee cocktail thing he found in the canned section.”

Changkyun chucks the drink back and lets out a horrified cough post-swallow. Jooheon snorts at him. “Don’t you judge me, Jooheonie. Parties are almost unbearable without liquor.”

“So why do you  _ go to them _ ?” Jooheon retorts.

“For the view,” Changkyun says dreamily, scanning the room. 

“Haven’t you already fucked half this fraternity?” 

“Maybe a third,” Changkyun admits. “But they’re all mostly my friends. We have plans to be pack after graduation.”

Because that’s all Changkyun wants. A pack like the ones in the old movies. Like the Breakfast Club pack. Like the Outsiders pack. More and more shifters have discovered life outside of packs and gone solo, but Changkyun has never wanted that. Independence sounds like death. Like starvation.

“Really?” 

“Yeah,” Changkyun says, grabbing another drink and sipping this time. “I like these Alphas. They’d be a good pack for us, Honey. You should get to know them.”

“Isn’t Hyungwon still pissed at you for sleeping with Hoseok?”

“He isn’t pissed at me. He’s confused and jealous. I told him we’re just friends who fuck sometimes. I’ve known Hoseok since pack camp when we were kids. Before we even presented. I’d probably still wanna sleep with Hoseok if he were also an Omega. I just like being around him.”

“Hyungwon doesn’t really get that,” Jooheon explains.

“Yeah, I know. He didn’t go to pack camp. He’s been watching all those shows with mated pairs living solo. Monogamy is such a bizarre Beta construct. Don’t you get antsy after a day of studying alone in the library? I get itchy. I need touch to live. I need to dive into a pile of bodies. I’m Tinkerbell, but I don’t need applause; I need cuddles.”

“Or knots.”

“Whatever,” Changkyun sighs. “Knots feel good and cuddles feel good, and I won’t apologize for giving my body what it needs. You might fight against your body’s urges, but if I’m hungry, I eat.”

“I don’t fight anything. I just don’t need anything as badly as you seem to,” Jooheon says.

“Mhm,” Changkyun replies, coughing  _ repression _ into his cupped palm.

Jooheon elbows Changkyun’s ribs hard and grabs a drink, as if to prove to Changkyun that he isn’t a big old twig in the quicksand, or whatever the expression is.

Hoseok walks into the room, shirtless, with two big handprints slapped onto his chest in black paint. Even like this, looking like a bumbling oaf, Changkyun’s loins give a tight squeeze. 

Behind him, Minhyuk walks out of the room with his giant pale hands coated in black paint, his handsome face tipped back in raucous laughter. Beside him, Changkyun feels Jooheon shiver and draw in a sharp breath.

“What was that about urges, Honey?” Changkyun teases under his breath. “I can smell the walls of your repression crumbling.”

“Nothing is crumbling,” Jooheon hisses, the scent of his soft baby powder pheromones seeping out through Changkyun’s skinny jeans. 

Changkyun gives an exaggerated sniff. “Sure does smell a whole lot like crumbling.”

Hoseok runs right up to Changkyun, arms spread wide as if to give him a hug, but Changkyun backs up against the wall, hands raised in warning in front of his chest. “Watch yourself, bozo. You forget you’re covered in paint?”

Jooheon backs away slowly, unknowingly moving closer to Minhyuk.

Hoseok glances back down at his big barrel chest and giggles. “Whoopsie?”

“You’re totally stoned, huh?” Changkyun giggles back, tipping his head to the side to allow Hoseok to slide his nose and lips over his scent gland. 

Hoseok lets out a low groan and grips Changkyun’s hips tightly, nodding. “Minhyuk brought back Nip from over winter break.”

“Oh, shit. We haven’t done Nip since high school,” Changkyun says, gripping Hoseok’s thick forearms to steady himself through the rush of blood from his scent glands. 

“Yeah, one of my old friends just transferred from a city Beta school, so we’re celebrating his first weekend here,” Hoseok replies, breath smelling deep and earthy. “He doesn’t do Nip or anything, but we offered.”

Changkyun laughs and shoves Hoseok off of him with palms slapped to his hard abdomen to avoid the paint. (And to touch Hoseok’s hard abdomen.) “You got stoned while your guest of honor stayed sober?”

Hoseok laughs but doesn’t deny it. “I wasn’t gonna say no to a good time.”

“Well,” Jooheon says, gaze sliding around the room to avoid landing for too long on Minhyuk, who doesn’t seem to notice or care at all that Jooheon is almost spraying panicked lust into the air. 

The rooms always kind of smell like panicked lust at Mu Chi Alpha frat house anyhow.

There’s a moment where Minhyuk seems to get a whiff finally, and he turns to face Jooheon. His eyes glaze over. He opens his mouth, and the sound that comes out is somewhere between a purr and a growl. 

Jooheon, alarmed but still spraying panicked lust, backs up behind Changkyun, against the wall. 

“Minhyuk gets weird on Nip,” Hoseok admits, lifting Minhyuk’s arm with a hand on his wrist, making Minhyuk’s hand flap in the air like a wave. “He’s always weird, but he gets kinda primal.”

“Isn’t that how most people get?” Jooheon says nervously. “One of those natural drugs or whatever?”

Minhyuk purrs again at the sound of Jooheon’s voice.

“Soft,” he groans. 

“Who is Minhyuk purring at now?” comes a voice from the doorway. 

Changkyun turns, and the sensation that hits him is indescribable. Somewhere between  _ how  _ and  _ why _ . Somewhere between the gut churning, stomach acid swell of forgetting and the elated high of remembering. 

Because there, in the doorway, is the first and only person Changkyun has ever loved. 

Kihyun Yoo. 

He hasn’t grown much since the last time Changkyun saw him--Kihyun was, what? Fifteen? Neither he nor Changkyun have grown much in the years since. But Kihyun’s face is so different now. It’s so sharp where it was once rounded with pillowy cheeks. His jawline is so much more prominent, like the hard edge of a pane of glass. He looks so much more...severe. Foxlike. 

Changkyun’s heart lurches up into his throat, pounding against his scent gland so hard that Hoseok turns and leans down a bit to sniff him. 

“Hoseok,” Changkyun whimpers, “why didn’t you tell me the friend who transferred was  _ Kihyun _ ?”

“Huh?” Hoseok asks, still sniffing, but then his eyes go wide and bright with amusement. “OH my  _ Goddess _ . You’re right. You knew him too. You more than knew him, huh?”

Changkyun slaps Hoseok’s naked bicep and feels his feet grow heavy against the wood floor. 

“What was the last thing you said to him? That if he presented as Alpha, you would give him your virginity?” Hoseok sounds moments away from bursting into laughter. 

Changkyun feels his internal organs burning up and turning to bloody sludge. “It was pack camp. We were  _ kids _ .”

“Mhm,” Hoseok taunts. “You sure broke that promise, huh?”

Kihyun steps out of the smoky room, which must be Minhyuk’s, and even through the scent of burning Nip, Changkyun can smell the clean pure scent of warm, familiar skin. 

It reminds Changkyun of the nights he and Kihyun would sneak out of the cabins to curl up beneath the foggy night sky, the moon just a blur of light behind thick wispy clouds. The nights when Kihyun would sing stupid pack songs or ramble on and on about something inane like why carpentry is a vital skill for all pack members, and Changkyun would pillow his head on Kihyun’s soft stomach until his eyelids grew heavy. The nights that turned into bright hot mornings beneath summer sun, when the pack camp counselors would chastise them for sneaking out again but never really punished them. 

Because the whole point of pack camp was to forge lifelong bonds. To get confused shifter kids to decide that being in a pack would be better than going solo. To assuage shifter parents that their kids would choose the right path, the traditional path. To make being in a pack seem cool, seem normal, even while everything around them changed, modernized. To show that pack life isn’t obsolete, isn’t this arcane idea that shifters cling to for comfort. 

And Changkyun has never wanted anything else. Never, not once, has he considered going solo. Jooheon will mention the idea of moving to the city to get a job, a studio apartment, maybe a partner if he has time, and Changkyun feels his skin crawling. His inner Omega pacing the walls of his body in warning.  _ Don’t even think it _ . 

He and Hoseok and Kihyun: they were always going to be pack. Always. 

But there, in the scent of Kihyun from across the room, Changkyun notes there aren’t any strong pheromones. Beneath the scent of clean, warm skin, there’s nothing. 

He’s a Beta. 

Changkyun sees the pack in his mind collapsing into a giant sinkhole. All his internal organs vibrate in protest, and Changkyun feels seasick on steady ground.

And, if Changkyun has any lingering hopes for that future, Kihyun steps closer and crushes them further into the beautiful green earth. Letting them slowly burn up. 

“Changkyun,” Kihyun says, holding out his hand. A handshake. 

Six years later, and Changkyun gets a handshake from the boy who was supposed to be his mate. The boy who adamantly declared that he’d build their pack cabin with his  _ bare-fuckin-hands _ because that’s what pack does. 

But this Kihyun smells like Kihyun soaked in cologne. Like a fire pit doused in Axe Body Spray. Changkyun’s nose wrinkles, and he steps back. 

“You’re a Beta,” Changkyun blurts, feeling his vision swimming at the scent. It’s so...  _ wrong _ .

Kihyun’s brows pull together, and he grits his jaw tighter--a sharper line in his thin face. 

“Mm,” he says in agreement. “What? We can’t be friends because I’m not Alpha?”

“No it’s just--you  _ smell _ .” 

Minhyuk barks out a loud laugh and moves to slap a hand on Kihyun’s back. “I told you you reek, Ki.”

“Sorry I’m not some  _ naturalist _ who refuses to wear cologne so my  _ pheromones _ can shine through,” Kihyun snips. 

“You have them, though?” Changkyun croaks, legs moving of their own volition to get closer. 

KIhyun tenses up like he’d be prepared to fight Changkyun if he got any closer. “I’m still a shifter.”

Hoseok, sensing the tension, barks out a heavy laugh. “Who wants to swim?” 

“I--”

Before he can reply, Hoseok grabs Changkyun and throws him over his shoulder. “Everyone in the pool!” 

Changkyun screams, wriggling in Hoseok’s hold, and then he’s being rushed out the back door and tossed into the pool, clothes and all. He surfaces with his middle finger cocked in Hoseok’s direction, but then Hoseok is canon-balling right in front of him. The crowd, drunk and exhilarated, eventually follows. 

Changkyun climbs Hoseok like a tree in the water and coils around him in the sea of bodies. Hoseok grins, and Changkyun grabs his sweet pale ears like handlebars. 

“I owe you,” he mutters.

Hoseok shakes his head. “I get it. He’s different. I would’ve warned you, but I just...it was so long ago.”

Changkyun pouts, cheeks puffing out. “But you and I are still gonna be pack.”

Hoseok wraps his arms under Changkyun’s bum and hugs him tight to his chest, black paint running into the water and onto Changkyun’s clothes, but Changkyun doesn’t care anymore. Not when the soothing scent of  _ pack _ and  _ home _ and  _ comfort _ washes over him from where his face is tucked into Hoseok’s neck. 

“We’ll always be pack, Kyunnie. Promise.”

Changkyun notes Kihyun standing by the sliding back door, leaning against the door jamb with arms crossed over his chest. He’s watching the way Hoseok holds Changkyun above the water with big hands under Changkyun’s armpits. The way Hoseok nips at Changkyun’s neck and ears and cheeks. 

And Changkyun notes that Kihyun’s expression never changes.

 

Jooheon finds Changkyun in the bathroom later, washing the runny BB cream from his face. “I’m going back to the house.”

“No, stay,” Changkyun says, toweling at the droplets of water dripping from his bangs. “I’m gonna sleep over.”

“I’m not staying to watch you get reamed by some hulking Alphas,” Jooheon protests.

“I’m not getting reamed. I just like being with them. Around them. It’s like comfort. A blanket. Like home, you know?”

Jooheon shakes his head, shoulders slumping a little. “No, not really.”

“Stay,” Changkyun says again. He wants to add  _ please _ and  _ you’ll learn to like it _ and  _ I need you to stay with me _ ;  _ I need you to understand. _

Jooheon’s lips turn down at the corners. “Sorry, Kyunnie. I have work to do. I’ll text you when I get home.”

Fifteen minutes later, to counteract the melancholy of Jooheon’s lack of understanding, Changkyun’s head is pillowed on the soft downy fuzz of Hyunwoo’s lower stomach as Hoseok crawls in behind them. Hoseok and Hyunwoo have piled their mattresses, pillows, and blankets on the floor of their shared dorm room, where all three of them are now laying. Hyunwoo strokes his fingers absently through Changkyun’s hair as Hoseok noses at Hyunwoo’s bicep until Hyunwoo lifts his arm and pulls him close to his other side. 

“I wish they’d understand,” Changkyun mutters, burying his face in warm, tan skin and scenting the rock salt and burning charcoal on Hyunwoo.

“It might take time,” Hyunwoo says. “Not everyone was raised like we were.”

“But what about the ones that were...the ones that turned away?”

Hoseok heaves a deep sigh. “I know you’re upset about Kihyun but--”

“Upset about Kihyun?” Comes Minhyuk from the doorway. “ _ Shocking _ . Do tell.”

“Minhyuk, can you not for once?” Hoseok sighs.

Changkyun lifts his head from Hyunwoo’s belly and blinks sleepily in Minhyuk’s direction. “If you want a chance with Jooheon, come snuggle and shut up.”

Minhyuk tips his head to the side, clearly having finally come down from his Nip high. “Jooheon?”

“Baby powder,” Changkyun replies, smirking.

Minhyuk whips his shirt over his head and tosses it into Hyunwoo’s laundry basket before collapsing himself behind Changkyun on the mattress. “His name is Jooheon?”

Changkyun lays his head back down and lets Minhyuk nuzzle his face into the back of Changkyun’s neck. “The agreement was that you’d shut up.”

Changkyun feels his cheek bouncing up and down and notices Hyunwoo giggling to himself. 

“What? Stop jostling me on your bowl full’a jelly.”

“For such a pack traditionalist, you sure are a terrible Omega.”

Changkyun whaps Hyunwoo’s chest. “Hold still,  _ Alpha _ . I’m trying to be cozy. And I’m not a terrible Omega. I’m the pack brat.”

“But seriously,” Minhyuk whispers after a moment of peace, of hot breath and the rumble of the air conditioner. “What did Kihyun do?”

 

When Changkyun’s parents dropped him off at pack camp, Changkyun was thirteen. He’d newly bleached his hair because the American pop idols were all doing it, and Changkyun wanted nothing more than to be hip, trendy, and  _ cool _ . He wanted to wear Rolling Stones t-shirts and acid washed jeans.

Every day at pack camp, kids could pick an activity from a list. And Changkyun, well, he already knew everything there was to know about pack life, having grown up with two pack-supremacist parents who had wanted to keep raising him in a pack but were forced to relocate for work. (Biochemists). Not a lot of opportunities in most naturalist packs for scientific advancement. All the pack camp activities were like: 

_ Introduction to poisonous flora  _

_ Introduction to nest building _

_ Introduction to healthy natural grazing _

_ Introduction to Pack lore _

_ Introduction to proper mating rituals _

The only class Changkyun went to his first week was  _ Introduction to cooking for a pack _ . Because, again, having grown up with pack-loving but pack-separate parents, Changkyun knew quite a bit about microwaving macaroni and not much about what to do with an onion.

It was a class where only four kids showed up because the other classes were more about chemistry and pack positioning, and Changkyun didn’t care if he was an alpha or an omega. He knew he’d be in a pack regardless. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he would. 

It was there, in a little semicircle of kids sat on cut tree-stumps around a large cooking fire that thirteen-year-old Changkyun met fifteen-year-old Kihyun.

He was only an inch or so taller than Changkyun but was probably finished with his growth spurt. His hair was soft, a little shaggy, and pure, deep, warm black. It’s hard to say how Changkyun knew his hair was a  _ warm _ black, but he knew.

His face was round, the apples of his cheeks so puffy and swollen-looking, like he had crammed acorns away in them for the winter. The thought made Changkyun laugh aloud, and when he did, Kihyun glared at him. 

“Hamtaro,” Changkyun declared, pointing a freshly plucked carrot in Kihyun’s direction. 

“Watch yourself, kid.”

“Sorry, Hamtaro  _ Sir _ .”

Kihyun narrowed his eyes and lifted a tomato in his right hand, holding it right in front of Changkyun’s face. He squeezed.

Changkyun shrieked.

Minutes later, the two of them were standing on the dock of the camp lake, preparing to wash the juices of a bitter food fight off their skin and clothes. Being the pack-minded child he was, Changkyun stripped down quickly and dove in, while Kihyun lingered on the dock, thumbs pushing idly at the waistband of his own cargo shorts. 

“What’s wrong with you?”

Kihyun shrugged, glancing away at the line of kayaks on the rocky shore. 

“You weird about being naked? At pack camp?”

Kihyun grit his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and shoved his cargo shorts down to his feet. “I’m not  _ weird _ about it. I just don’t know you.”

Changkyun swam back up to the dock, elbows on the wood, grinning up at Kihyun’s bare skin in the early evening light. He was radiant, tan skin with crew-sock tan lines and hair dripping with tomato juice, and Changkyun, young idiot he was, couldn’t look away. 

“Getting naked with me is a great way to fix that.”

Kihyun moved to sit on the edge of the dock, kicking Changkyun away with the sole of his bare foot. “You’re a little brat, huh?”

“Every pack needs one, don’t you think?”

“And that’s what you want? You want to be the pack brat?”

Changkyun ducked under the surface of the water, resurfaced with a splash, and grabbed Kihyun’s dangling ankle until he was spluttering and hitting the water hard. Kihyun thrashed and eventually grabbed Changkyun beneath the water. With warm, wet hands gripping his arms, Changkyun felt Kihyun press him up against the thick wooden post of the pier. The back was slick with algae against his spine. 

And Changkyun, giggling and breathless, felt Kihyun’s hands like an awakening. Like a brand. Like everything he’d ever been told about love all welled up into one single touch. 

Kihyun, with water dripping from his long eyelashes, panting and annoyed, suddenly leaned in and touched his nose to Changkyun’s wet throat. And even though Changkyun didn’t smell like anything but young shifter, years away from presenting, Kihyun growled, a higher-pitched sound that made Changkyun’s toes curl beneath him as he treaded water. 

“You want to be my pack brat?”

Changkyun nodded, clutching back onto Kihyun’s bare skin as the two of them hovered there in the water beneath the dark pier. “Yes. Absolutely yes. Goddess, yes.”

“And what’ll I be?” Kihyun asked, as Changkyun nuzzled his own face into the crook of Kihyun’s throat, inhaling the scent of the water on skin. And beneath that, there was something making Changkyun’s gut ache in the best way. 

“Alpha. My Alpha.”

Kihyun had smirked, like he believed it already. Like he knew. Like he would do anything to make sure it came true. And Changkyun built his entire world around that moment. 


	2. Rave in a Cornfield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: all the chapters from this one on will be centered around a certain fraternity theme party, so...  
> heads up for excessive recreational drinking, casual sex, heat sex, and angst.  
> This is a college au and all these parties will be based on parties I myself went to in college, so...yes, I understand they are dumb and awful.

Changkyun’s first heat came late. He’d been in a panic since he turned thirteen, waiting for something, anything to happen to his body. He watched his classmates all disappear for weeks, only to return with proudly flushed cheeks and, sometimes, with mating bonds. 

It’s become pretty rare for young shifters to mate during their first presentations. That used to be the norm, back before people realized they could have aspirations beyond breeding. 

Changkyun had one friend, Nayeon, who came back to class from her first heat with a mate, Momo, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, despite them being fifteen and completely unprepared for anything that would come after. Changkyun never doubted their bond. Never, not once, did he think _ it’s a shame they couldn’t wait _ or  _ it’s just a chemical reaction of their pheromones _ . Because anyone who saw them would realize that the universe sewed them together as naturally as anything else.

So when Changkyun’s first heat came, he found himself thinking he wouldn’t really mind if he was mated. Not if he ended up like Nayeon.

He was feverish, skin itchy as the Omega that paced the cage bars of Changkyun’s ribs fought to tear itself to the surface of his body. Shifters can’t take their natural forms anymore, some sad side-effect of evolution or pollution--one of the utions. But for a few hours, when Changkyun first woke up that day of his first heat, he really thought his Omega might succeed in tearing his skin free and escaping. 

Everything burned like his blood couldn’t stand being contained beneath his skin any longer, boiling up to the surface, and Changkyun screamed for a good hour before the RA at his boarding school found him and brought him to the quarantined Heat floor. To avoid spurring other Omegas into heat with his pheromones, Changkyun and the other Omegas in heat were hidden away in rooms with blasting air conditioning and ice baths and ice pops, and none of it helped at all.

In the haze of heat, Changkyun felt warm breath on his cheek and reached up to touch a cool cheek. He grinned, cupping his burning hot palm to that skin and murmuring, “You’re here, Ki.”

A laugh, sad and amused all at once. “It’s Hoseok.”

Changkyun blinked through the fog filling his skull. “Ho...seok?”

“You texted me.”

Changkyun whimpered, wrapping his bare arms around Hoseok’s neck and tugging him down until their bodies were flush. “Skin. Gimme your skin. I need your skin.”

Hoseok laughed again, trying to wriggle out of Changkyun’s death grip. “Sweetheart, I can’t with you holding me this way.”

Changkyun keened, a hoarse and shrill sound, when Hoseok pulled away, but when his body returned to the bed, he was blessedly bare and cool and  _ perfect _ .

Hoseok pressed his lips to Changkyun’s swollen scent gland and growled, a low rumbling filling his chest, and the sound made slick gush from somewhere deep and dark inside Changkyun’s body that no longer care if the person here at his first heat was Kihyun or not. 

“I know it isn’t me you wanted for this moment,” Hoseok said, gently, oh so gently, touching his cold lips to every bit of Changkyun’s sweat-slick skin. 

“It is. I texted you. I want you. You’re home. You’re pack. Please,” Changkyun begged, coiling his legs around Hoseok’s waist, much thinner then than he is now. 

“Shh,” Hoseok cooed, somehow much calmer than Changkyun assumed an Alpha would be around a newly presented Omega. “I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

Changkyun arched up, raking his blunt nails down Hoseok’s back when Hoseok slipped his fingers easily into Changkyun’s body. “Just take me. I don’t need--just  _ take me _ \--”

Hoseok didn’t listen, just took his time in a way Changkyun didn’t think he really deserved. Hoseok wiped his hand off on the silk sheets, the scent of Changkyun’s heat thick and heady in the air, and when he rutted into Changkyun’s body that first time, Changkyun’s Omega purred so contently, so triumphantly. 

Hoseok clutched onto Changkyun tightly for three straight days, helping him clean himself, helping him eat, helping him mollify the ache that rang in his blood like chime ringing from the deepest depths of the ocean. Hoseok was, would always be, Changkyun’s family. His pack. The home that would follow him to the ends of the Earth to keep him happy.

And if he heard heat-addled Changkyun moaning another name as he held him down with thick fingers wrapped around the back of Changkyun’s neck, fingertips digging into the scent glands behind his ears, Hoseok never mentioned it. Changkyun has a faint memory of feeling the head of Hoseok’s cock circling his sore, puffy rim; has a faint memory of gripping the silky sheets in sweaty palms; has a faint memory of tear tracks licking themselves down his flushed cheeks as he sobbed out ‘yes, Ki, my alpha, my alpha, my  _ alpha--” _

Hoseok never brought it up, and Changkyun thanks his stars every day for that.

  
  


Changkyun wakes up in the Mu Chi Alpha house with Hoseok nipping gently at the back of his neck. He laughs, rolling onto his back to let Hoseok tug at his ear with his teeth. “Someone is needy this morning.”

“You smell good,” Hoseok says groggily. “What did you dream about?”

Minhyuk snuffles awake on Changkyun’s other side, blinking his eyes open slowly. “Smells like peaches. ‘N cinnamon.”

“Is that what I smell like, Hoseok?” 

Hoseok presses his nose in behind Changkyun’s left ear, while Minhyuk leans in to sniff at his right ear. Changkyun squeaks, his ears sensitive, tickled by their breath. He swats at them both, trying to wrench the blanket up over his face. 

There’s a knock on the door, and then a “Why am I knocking? This is my house.”

Looking at them, Hyunwoo beside his fraternity “big”, Hakyeon, it’s pretty fucking hysterical. Hyunwoo could probably eat Hakyeon. Sure, Hakyeon’s tall, the two of them about the same height, skin the same gorgeous shade of golden brown, but where Hyunwoo is thick as a good expensive cut of beef, Hakyeon is slender and lithe like the little ballerina inside a music box.

“Up and at ‘em, kiddos,” Hakyeon declares, pressing the sole of his slippered foot to the small of Hyunwoo’s back and shoving him into his room. “Clean up your precious little slumber party mess. We have a mixer tonight.”

Minhyuk jerks his head up from the pillow, suddenly much more awake. “It’s  _ Rave in a Cornfield  _ night!”

Hakyeon heaves a sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s. That’s not actually the name of the party.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“It’s just Mixer in Nature.”

“Okay but we play EDM music while drinking liquor in a cornfield so…”

Sanghyuk walks up behind Hakyeon, waving an empty wallet. “Daddy Hakyeon, I need mo’ money to get booze for the rave in a cornfield.”

Hakyeon throws his arms up to the ceiling. “That’s not what--! You know what?” He spins around, hands Sanghyuk the fraternity credit card, and shoos him away. “Nevermind. Fine. It’s a rave in a cornfield. But, please, let’s just clean ourselves up. I hate embarrassing myself in front of the Omega dorm heads.”

“You mean Taekwoon,” Hoseok observes, nudging Changkyun with his elbow and waggling his eyebrows.

“No, not just Taekwoon.”

“But mostly Taekwoon,” Minhyuk adds, blinking innocently up at Hakyeon from the floor.

From the end of the hall, Sanghyuk yells, “Hakyeon, Taekwoon is here!”

And Hakyeon shrieks, sprinting to the hall bathroom to gently tousle his hair with water, before rushing back down the hall with frantic steps on the creaking wood floor. 

“Go get ‘im, Daddio!” Minhyuk shouts after him.

“I don’t know why he bothers,” Changkyun says, huffing out a laugh, “everyone knows Taekwoon has wanted that ass for  _ years _ .”

“He’s got an odd way of showing it,” Hyunwoo replies, grabbing the mattresses and wrenching them out from under everyone like a clumsy magician, so they all roll off onto the floor. 

“What? You don’t glare stoically at your crush all day and run away from him every time he tries to dance with you?” Hoseok laughs, tossing pillows up from the floor into Hyunwoo’s arms so he can place them back on their beds. 

“Don’t be mean. Taekwoon shows love in his own way. You know, like when Hakyeon got shift-sick at last year’s zip-ties and mai-tais party.”

“Oh, yeah, he did carry Hakyeon out like a pretty little damsel. That was classic.”

“I mean, they were already zip-tied together, thanks to yours truly,” Minhyuk says smugly. Everything Minhyuk says is smug.

“Hakyeon gets shift-sick a lot, doesn’t he?” Changkyun asks, rolling over onto his belly to peer up at Hyunwoo as he makes his bed. 

Hyunwoo tips his head to the side and considers the question. Every question takes Hyunwoo more time to answer than most people, but Changkyun has always treasured that about him. The way he only says what he means. “I guess a little more than most people. His family apparently shifted full-force up until relatively recently. One of the last families to stop being able to. Hakyeon’s grandfather could still shift. So sometimes he gets a little...I dunno.”

“Cabin-feverish?”

“Yeah, his Alpha gets cabin-feverish. His ruts are no joke. We have to lock him in the basement.”

“He doesn’t take Omegas with him or anything?”

“Eh, well, Sanghyuk and Wonshik go down there with him sometimes. I think he purposely avoids taking Omegas during his ruts. Think he’s scared of accidentally mating someone.”

“Why are you guys talking about ruts at 10 am?” Kihyun peeks his head into the room, where Changkyun is shirtless and curled up against Minhyuk, cheek on Minhyuk’s nipple, leg thrown over Minhyuk’s stomach. “Oh. I didn’t realize you were still here.”

“Changkyun sleeps here a lot,” Minhyuk says, nuzzling the top of Changkyun’s head. “Right,  _ bebe _ ?”

Changkyun flushes and chokes on an uncomfortably awkward chuckle. “Right.”

“Of course,” Kihyun replies, face carefully blank, “he always had a thing for Alphas.”

Changkyun feels righteous anger filling his lungs, inflating his body from the inside like an off-put pufferfish. “I have a thing for being with my  _ friends _ ,” he hisses, wrenching himself away from Minhyuk and pushing himself up to standing. He gets right up in Kihyun’s face in the doorway, ignoring the way his skin prickles with heat at the proximity.  “Sticking around, you know. Showing people I care about them no matter what.” 

Kihyun sniffs the air, eyes shifting down to Changkyun’s throat, where there are marks from Hoseok. “Right,” he says, expressionless. “Smelling like random Alphas all the time has nothing to do with showing off in front of other Omegas, huh? It isn’t like you care about posturing, Changkyun. It isn’t like you once asked to wear my clothes so your bunkmates would be jealous.”

“I was a kid,” Changkyun spits. “And you weren’t a huge fucking douchehole back then. I’ll never ask you for anything again, don’t worry.”

“Changkyun, wait,” Hoseok says, grabbing Changkyun’s clothes off the floor and placing them in his arms. He plants a kiss onto Changkyun’s forehead and pats his butt to send him off. “I’ll see you at the party later, ok?”

“Yeah, okay. Bye Minnie, bye Hyunwoo.” He casts a glare in Kihyun’s direction. “Goodbye... _ Guest _ .”

Kihyun folds his arms across his chest and steps aside to let Changkyun out of the room into the hallway. 

Behind him, there’s the sound of a pillow hitting the wall and then a muffled squawk that must be another pillow nailing Kihyun in the face. Hoseok gives a pretty hard toss.

“You really are a douchehole,” 

 

Jooheon and Hyungwon are laying on Jooheon’s bed when Changkyun returns to their dorm. “You reek of Alpha, you know,” Jooheon says, dark hair fanned out on the pillow beneath him.

Hyungwon lifts his head from Jooheon’s belly, frizzy blonde bangs falling into his eyes, and he sniffs the air. His expression clouds over, puffy pink lips turning down at the corners.

“Please don’t give me that face, Hyungwon,” Changkyun begs, crawling up onto the bed and splaying himself out over them. “It isn’t like that. I don’t wanna mate Hoseok. He’s my oldest friend.” 

“Who took your first heat.”

Changkyun grimaces. “As a  _ friend _ .”

“Uh huh,” Hyungwon says.

“I’m not here to force you into an ideology,” Changkyun sighs, touching his lips to Hyungwon’s forearm. 

“Big words, baby.”

“You know what I mean. This is how I was raised.This is just my life. And I know it isn’t yours. But it's Hoseok’s too. So if you. If you really want to  _ be _ with him, you might need to learn a bit more about it. At least tolerate it.”

Hyungwon huffs and pulls Changkyun forward into his arms more. “Sorry I’m a stupid toad.”

“You’re not, oh my Goddess,” Changkyun giggles, slapping his palms to Hyungwon’s cheeks and squishing them, smooching his puffy fish lips. 

“Maybe if I could still shift, I’d be just a big ole stupid toad.”

“And Honey would be a pretty little bumble bee,” Changkyun chimes in.

Jooheon gives a half-hearted buzz and drops his arms over his face. “I hate you both. I’m not going tonight. I’ve had enough of parties for the rest of eternity.”

“You have to. It’s mandatory for the house members,” Changkyun sings into Jooheon’s face. “C’mon Mr. Bumble. Let’s get you ready to rave. Don’t you want to look nice for a certain Mr. Minhyuk Lee?”

“No, I don’t. You can’t make me,” Jooheon whines.

Hyungwon and Changkyun then team up to roll Jooheon off the bed and onto the floor until they’re just all a mess of limbs and simpering Omega whines from Jooheon. 

From the doorway, there comes the sound of Hongbin kicking the door open. “If any of you go missing tonight, we aren’t going back for you.”

“Jaehwan will go back for me,” Changkyun retorts. 

“Will he? Are you sure?” Hongbin challenges, pretty, perfect eyebrows arching in question.

Changkyun slumps over into Hyungwon’s lap. “I’m the baby; you have to rescue me.”

“Why don’t you just promise to not go missing?” Jooheon scoffs.

“Well that’s just no fun at all,” Changkyun whimpers. 

“Can someone make sure he’s normal for just, like, three hours?” Hongbin asks, rubbing at his forehead with delicate pale fingers. 

“No promises,” Hyungwon shrugs.

Hongbin turns to Jooheon. Jooheon utters a pathetic buzz. 

Hongbin shuts the door with a series of country-accented swears under his breath.

 

Changkyun is in charge of stocking up on pre-game caffeine and snacks. The  _ Rave in a Cornfield  _ mixer notoriously has no set end time. No last-call for drinks. A few people have woken up to the bright halo of the early morning sunrise with beer cans still clutched in their sleeping hands. 

The closest off-campus cafe is COOL STORY, BREW. It mainly stocks tea and pastries, but Taekwoon is very particular about his lattes, and supposedly this place usually gets it right. 

There’s a bell over the door that rings out loudly in the empty shop. Most kids on campus use their meal plan cards to get coffee in the library cafe or the cafeteria, where things have already been paid for. Changkyun, however, has a very picky dorm head that he must satisfy with artisanal caffeine. And you do not want to get caught with generic coffee when it comes to Taekwoon Jung. He can smell when the labor was not quite laborious enough in the making of his coffee. 

There’s no one behind the counter, probably because the shop is completely empty, so Changkyun calls out, “Ahhhexcuse me!”

And, of course, because the Mother Goddess is clearly punishing him for something (maybe that time he stole a marble from the natural history museum gift shop at age ten?), who else should walk up behind the counter, tucking his fringe under a forest green ball cap, but Kihyun Yoo.

“Oh,” Changkyun says, suddenly trying to pull up Google Maps in his brain, trying to figure out where the next nearest artisanal cafe is in this bumblefucknowhere town. 

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready to rave in a corn maze or something?” Kihyun asks, tying his apron around his narrow waist, and Changkyun’s gut gives a little tug. He’s really gotten so thin, his wrists bony and jutting as he leans against the counter. 

“I’m in charge of pre-game caffeine.”

Kihyun arches a brow. “Isn’t that, like, really bad for you? Caffeine and liquor?”

“Oh,” Changkyun stammers, “uh, yeah. Obviously. Frat culture?” He shrugs, trying to tuck his hands into the way-too-tight pockets of his skinny black jeans. He gets his fingertips crammed in before he realizes his hands will not fit, so he just wipes his palms down his thighs instead. He refuses to meet Kihyun’s eyes to see if he noticed Changkyun’s failed fidget maneuver. “My dorm head is a latte junkie, so please do not mess this up for me.”

Kihyun blinks stoically for a moment before nodding. “Okay, so one latte. You’re gonna carry all the coffee for your dorm?”

Changkyun sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and nods. “Dat maknae life. Until some new pledges come, it’s all me.”

Kihyun moves to the espresso grinder. “He a single-origin kinda guy?”

“I have no idea what that means, but is it fancier?”

“Not necessarily, but I suppose it could be considered ‘fancy’ depending on the location. This is Ethiopian.”

“Huh. Okay, well, uh, sure. Hit him up with that, then.”

Kihyun flickers his gaze over to Changkyun and huffs a single laugh. His eyes crinkle up, his chin wrinkling in that familiar way, and Changkyun forgets he’s supposed to be mad at him.  Douchehole or whatever. Sexy, oddly comforting douchehole. First love douchehole. 

“You got a job already,” Changkyun observes. “Here for two days, and you already have a job.”

Kihyun tamps down the ground espresso and Changkyun watches the muscles of his forearms flex. “My parents weren’t really happy that I transferred, so I have to pay my own tuition.”

“What? Why not?” From what Changkyun remembers of Kihyun’s parents, they had been just as gung-ho about pack life as Changkyun’s family. Changkyun even used to be pen-pals with Kihyun’s mom, trying to weedle out any secrets about Kihyun that he could. She had revealed his hatred of cranberries and dislike of fish because of his strong sense of scent. Changkyun always wondered if she purposefully hid any other weaknesses, or if Kihyun really was that hard to crack.

“Why bother sending a Beta to a pack school, you know?” Kihyun says bluntly, and Changkyun’s internal organs shrivel up like prunes. 

“This isn’t just a pack school. There are Betas here, and even Alphas and Omegas who want to go solo,” Changkyun says roughly, throat closing up. He watches Kihyun steam the milk, tipping the pitcher gently in his pretty little hands. 

“I was at a Beta performing-arts school. A good one, too.”

“Then...why?”

Kihyun pours the milk over the pulled espresso in its paper cup, forming an intricate line of hearts in foam. Changkyun leans over the counter to look down at it, but Kihyun snaps the plastic lid down over the top. 

“I’m not sure myself,” Kihyun says, sliding the cup across the counter. 

“Oh,” Changkyun replies dumbly. “Are you coming tonight?”

Kihyun leans against the back wall, arms tightly crossed over his chest. “Why do you care? Aren’t I a huge douchehole?”

“I had a right to be mad.”

“Sure.” His eyes are cold, empty, and he looks at the clock instead of Changkyun. “What else can I get you? My shift ends in an hour, and I still need to run inventory.”

“Just fill this up with iced coffee, please,” Changkyun says, wheeling the heavy metal canister out from behind him. 

“Is this...a keg?”

“Reuse and Recycle, right? Protect the Mother Earth Goddess.”

“I’m not sure that’s the exact meaning of that phrase, but sure. Give me a couple minutes.” Kihyun wheels the keg behind the counter and takes it into the back room, behind the swinging doors. Changkyun observes the wiry muscles beneath the back of his crisp white button-down again. 

Changkyun’s phone buzzes in his pocket. 

[Dorm-Head Jung]: where 

[Changkyunnie]: rly taekwoon you cant even send me a full sentence

[Dorm-head Jung]: where latte

[Changkyunnie]:  _ image sent.  _ HERE LATTE

[Dorm-head Jung]: LATTE  (ﾒ` ﾛ ´)

Kihyun returns, struggling a bit with the full keg of iced coffee, pushing it back in front of the counter. 

“Can you, uh, help?” Changkyun asks, gesturing to the metal dolly he’d wheeled the keg in on. “I just can’t get it over the door bottom. The, uh, the raised metal thinger.” 

Kihyun stares at the dolly for a moment before snorting out a laugh. “Frats are bizarre.”

“I, um, I bet Mu Chi Alphas would let you in, if you wanted.”

“I’m not an Alpha, Changkyun,” Kihyun snips, shakily lifting the dolly up over the raised metal at the bottom of the doorway.

“But they’re your friends, you know; if you asked, I’m sure they’d--”

“Goodbye, Changkyun.” Kihyun steps back inside, and the cafe door swings closed with the ring of the bells.

“Right. Bye, Ki.”

 

The bus picks their frat dorm up at ten. Taekwoon and Hakyeon have a strict no-driving policy for all parties, which should be pure logic, but the Delta Alphas were in a pretty shitty accident when the drunk dorm head tried to drive them home from their Country Club Assholes party. And thus the party bus for every off-campus party. 

Which is pretty fun. The bus has dancing poles and bottles of cheap champagne and loud crappy pop music that always pumps everyone up. The windows are tinted, and the seats are a weird carpet-like cloth with a very eighties decorative pattern with multi-colored triangles.

Changkyun tugs up his tight leather pants and fiddles with the buttons of his flannel shirt. All the Omegas are in matching flannels, per the cornfield theme. Changkyun is in Taekwoon’s frat family, his grand-little, so their line is all wearing leather pants. Changkyun’s big is Soyou, and she’s also rocking some white-leather pants and a red flannel tied around her thin waist, just under her boobs. 

“Why’re you so hot?” Changkyun whines, leaning his head on her shoulder in the bus. 

“How many shots did you take at the pregame, Kyunnie?” Soyou asks, pushing Changkyun’s bangs away from his eyes. 

“Th--ive?”

“That’s not a number.”

“F...reve?”

“Again, not a--Changkyun, please,” Soyou giggles, pushing Changkyun’s face away from her throat, her scent gland. She smells like warm, melty brown sugar. Like slightly underbaked sugar cookies.

Outside, the moon hangs bright and vivid above the rows upon rows of corn and soybeans. There’s much less light pollution in their school area, so the stars and clearer, the surrounding sky darker. 

Changkyun feels the way the moon pulls at him, like a big heavy magnet hanging in the sky. It isn’t full moon; the school would never let them host a party off-campus during a full moon. The frats have a history of letting things get wildly out of hand at full-moon parties. Changkyun remembers seeing a girl in his Poetry Seminar with a huge bandage over a scabbed-over gash in her neck after a full moon party. She looked pretty smug about it, despite everything. A Claim mark, after all, is a pretty huge deal, even if it probably only happened because the moon somehow continues to hold sway over them, even though shifting abilities are obviously lost to time. 

“I just love corn,” Changkyun lies, poking out his tongue onto Soyou’s scent gland. 

She shrieks and shoves him onto the floor of the bus. He grasps the closest dance pole and continues laying there, feeling the alcohol swishing around in his tummy, his whole body feeling like it’s swaying with it. 

“Taekwoon!” Soyou cries shrilly. “Please teach your grand-little how to stop scenting everyone when he gets drunk.”

“Oh, so now he’s  _ my _ grand-little and not your little?” Taekwoon scoffs, checking his BB cream in a little compact mirror, shutting it with a brief snap. He shifts to kneel down beside Changkyun where he’s still lying on the floor, flicks his forehead, and says, “Keep your tongue in your mouth, ya little weasel. Not everyone is as free with scenting as you are.”

Changkyun gives a short, sad little salute. “Yessir.”

“That latte today was surprisingly good,” Taekwoon adds, thumbing gently over the little red mark left on Changkyun’s skin after the flick. “Where’d you get it?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

Taekwoon shows Changkyun his fist. 

“Cool Story, Brew, like always,” Changkyun blurts, hiding his face behind his palms. 

“Huh. They have a new barista? When Soonyoung was working there, the espresso was always burnt.”

“He was always dancing with the mops in the back room. I always heard the  _ Flashdance  _ soundtrack coming from his cell phone.”

Taekwoon’s gaze clouds over furiously. “He left my beans to burn.”

“Please don’t kill him; he’s my friend.”

“Who isn’t your friend?” Taekwoon sighs, moving back up to his cloth seat, crossing his legs and uncrossing them nervously. He always gets like this before he sees Hakyeon, which everyone finds baffling and hysterical. Jaehwan once drunkenly admitted that Taekwoon and Hakyeon actually fucked their freshman year and just refused to talk about it afterwards.

Which is unsurprising.

Making things unnecessarily complicated is a very Taekwoon thing to do. And Hakyeon, well, he has his weird thing about Omegas. 

The bus pulls off the road onto the dirt path that leads to the clearing in the middle of the cornfield. This year there is a massive corn maze set up with dim lamps hanging by the entrance and exits. It looks dark inside, which is both thrilling and terrifying. 

Hyungwon heads off to the DJ booth with Jihoon, the two of them looking like father and son as Hyungwon towers over Jihoon’s canary yellow head and swings their clasped hands between them as they walk. 

The night breeze is still warm and carries the scent of the surrounding woods and damp earth. Changkyun tips his head up to feel the light from the moon against his eyelids. He can immediately smell when the Mu Chi Alpha bus pulls up, when Hakyeon and Hyunwoo step off and tell everyone to behave. The familiar smells make Changkyun feel warm, mixing with the scent of wet earth and corn husks. And then, at the very end, the scent of chemicals and espresso.

Kihyun.

Minhyuk is dragging him off the bus, and Kihyun is wearing a thick wool beige cardigan and a deep scowl. Minhyuk, in a big lumberjack flannel that hangs down to his thighs, stomps across the dirt, bodily yanking Kihyun forward. 

Hoseok finds Changkyun immediately after stepping off the bus, giving him an apologetic wince. Changkyun shrugs in return and holds up a red cup as if to say  _ C’est la vie. _

Hyungwon, as if sensing the sour mood, immediately starts blaring “Sandstorm,” and Changkyun feels the bass vibrating beneath his boots. Hakyeon grabs Hongbin and moves him around in a strange, awkward, but oddly sensual pas de deux.

Hoseok tips his red cup against Changkyun’s when he finds him again moments later. “The air always smells so good out here.”

“Mm,” Changkyun hums, sipping lukewarm jungle juice. 

“Who made the juice today? Don’t tell me it was Jaehwan.”

“Could you tell from the ratio of pineapple juice to everclear?”

“Well, considering everclear doesn’t taste like anything--”

“Exactly. The suspiciously delicious fruitiness could be attributed to none other than Jaehwan Lee.”

Hoseok laughs and nuzzles his face into Changkyun’s hair. “Are you still mad?”

Changkyun isn’t sure. “I ran into him at the cafe. He’s working there now.”

“Cool Story, Brew?”

Changkyun nods, sipping his jungle juice and watching Minhyuk shove Kihyun towards the keg. “He was uncomfortable and terse, but he wasn't mean.”

“I’m sure he’s just trying to figure out how to act around us.”

“What do you mean?”

Hoseok rakes his hair away from his face and lets it fall in soft waves back to his eyebrows. “You know, because we had a--a rapport.”

“A rapport,” Changkyun repeats, loudly slurping at his jungle juice.

“Yeah,” Hoseok says, lightly punching Changkyun on the shoulder when he begins to snort a laugh. “You know what I mean! Shut up! A rapport!”

“Yeah, yeah, a rapport. Continue.” 

Hoseok narrows his eyes. “When you fall on your ass during Dizzy Bat, don’t expect me to go easy on you. But. Anyhow.  _ As I was saying _ , we had a way of communicating; we’d been close for years, and it must be hard for him to...reinsert himself into everything.”

“But why? He’s still Kihyun.”

Hoseok touches his lips to the rim of his cup and watches Kihyun get hoisted upside down at the keg, Minhyuk and Jaehwan holding his legs. His arms flex as he grips the edge of the keg, and Changkyun sighs. 

“Is he, though? To you? Are things still the same?”

Changkyun keeps watching Kihyun wrap his lips around the nozzle of the keg hose, drinking until he’s spluttering and kicking his legs to escape, falling over onto the grass and bellowing out his sweetly familiar goofy laughter. 

“I wish I knew.”

“I know how much he meant to you, Changkyun. You don’t have to hide anything from me.”

“I’m not, I promise,” Changkyun admits, finishing off his cup and crunching the plastic in his fist. “I really just...don’t know.“

“Hmm.”

Changkyun looks up at Hoseok and lifts a brow conspiratorially. “So about that Dizzy Bat.”

Hoseok smirks. 

Five minutes later, Changkyun is standing behind a chalk paint line in the grass, Hoseok beside him. There’s a crowd around them, and Changkyun is pretty sure he’s beyond tipsy at this point, the air too thick and humid against his skin, his eyes unable to remain still in his skull. Everything is moving color and heavy scents. He grips the plastic wiffle ball bat in his hands, the top cut open to fit the open can of beer inside. 

Hoseok can hold his liquor way better than Changkyun, on account of his being a ginormous hulking beast who puberty was extremely kind to, but Changkyun lives for drinking games. He was last year’s Annual Drunk Scrabble champion, having somehow drunkenly pulled the word quagmire out his ass at the last second. The ensuing applause had all been worth the excessive vomiting in a Red Lobster bathroom later. 

Jooheon lifts a little plastic checkered flag. “Players on your mark!”

Changkyun grins toothily in Hoseok’s direction. Hoseok kicks a pebble at him. 

“Get set!”

The crowd yells: “Chug!”

Changkyun tips the bat upside down, beer splashing cool and fizzy into his open mouth. Changkyun doesn’t like to brag, but he can fit a lot in his mouth. Yes, exactly like that. But also like this.

“Shit, he’s fast,” Seungcheol loudly observes from the sidelines, and Changkyun nearly spills as a giddy laugh builds up in his throat. 

“Twenty seconds!” Jooheon cries out as Changkyun flips his bat to show the emptiness of his can. “Spin!”

Changkyun touches his forehead to the end of the bat and spins himself in circles over and over and over and over and over and everything is off-kilter and hot and breezy, and when Jooheon yells, “Pitch!” Changkyun forgets where he is. 

He lifts the bat with pure muscle memory, trying to locate the little yellow wiffle ball as it soars right at him. He swings, and the bat just barely knicks the edge of the ball in the air before it drops down to the grass. 

He looks to Jooheon, who pauses and then shouts, “Good enough! Run! Hoseok: spin!”

Changkyun tries to run forward, but his legs threaten to give out beneath the weight of his body, his knees going one way and his torso going the complete opposite way. And, sure to form, Changkyun falls flat on his ass. Hoseok has stopped spinning and started to run, wobbling but still moving forward towards the stump at the finish line. Changkyun heaves himself back up to standing, feeling bile rising up in his throat at his own unsteadiness, and gives chase. He can’t tell where he’s going, but he knows how to follow Hoseok’s scent. He can tell he’s close when he leaps up, locking his arms around Hoseok’s neck, thighs around Hoseok’s waist. 

Hoseok shudders beneath him, nearly collapsing and yelling out “Little fuckin’--cheating koala!” 

Changkyun nearly cries with laughter as Hoseok carts him across the finish line, and it’s declared a tie despite the obvious cheating on Changkyun’s part. 

“There’s no rule against it,” Jooheon says, shrugging when Hoseok demands to be called the definitive winner. “Ya tied, ya oaf. Get over it.”

Changkyun, still latched on tight to Hoseok’s back, gives an excited Omega yip from deep in his chest, and Hoseok sighs. “Fine. Next time I’m dumping you right on your skinny little ass.”

“Ex _ cusez moi _ ,” Changkyun huffs, jumping off and onto the ground, lifting his flannel to perk his ass up in Hoseok’s direction. “My ass is not skinny.”

Hoseok looks over at Jooheon, gaze clearly settling on Jooheon’s obvious plush asset. “I mean, sheer comparison alone--”

“How  _ dare...th _ ,” Changkyun whines, for some reason feeling actual hurt stabbing out from his belly, like his bones are cracking under the weight of Hoseok’s words. “I--”

“Hey,” Hoseok says, reaching for Changkyun’s wrist to pull him back. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes you did. I’m small and skinny, and I probably wasn’t Omega enough to actually get what I wanted and now I’m just--I’m just--” He shakes his head and backs up toward the corn maze, seeking the quiet, the dark, the calm. “I’ll be back.”

“Changkyun, you’re  _ drunk _ .”

“Isn’t that the point?” Changkyun asks, running past the bright entrance of the corn maze and into the darkness.

He weaves slowly through the turns, touching the high walls of dry corn stalks with his fingertips and listening the way the crisp leaves rustle together. It’s only when he’s ten-fifteen minutes deep into the maze that he realizes he  _ is drunk _ . 

The more he blinks, the more the world shakes beneath him, and the more he understands that being drunk in a corn maze where screaming cannot possibly be heard over the sound of “Sandstorm” playing for what must be the hundredth time (thanks a lot, Hyungwon) is probably one of his worst plans to date. 

He starts to run. As if that will help him.

He runs and encounters dead end after dead end before colliding bodily into something hard. When he rubs at his muscles, hissing at the pain running up and down his spine from falling again onto his ass, he hears, “Guess I’m not the only one lost in here.”

“Ah, fuck,” Changkyun unfortunately says aloud.

Even in the dark, Changkyun knows it’s Kihyun. From the sound of his breath to the scent of chemical smoke from his cologne, everything points to Kihyun. 

Drunkenly, Changkyun slurs out, “Smelly.”

Kihyun is silent. “Why do you hate cologne so much?”

“It’s just not natural.”

“People naturally smell awful.”

Changkyun blindly reaches out and grabs Kihyun’s arm. Kihyun freezes, tensing up completely. “I just want to get out of here.”

“Okay,” is all Kihyun says for a while as he leads Changkyun through the aisles of tall corn, running into dead ends over and over until Changkyun feels frustrated tears pressing at the back of his eyelids. 

“I hate this,” he admits.

“I know,” Kihyun says, voice calm but unsure. “I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault.” Changkyun looks over at Kihyun in the darkness, finding the sharp cut of his jaw, the soft curl of his ear, the pale column of his throat. “We’re both lost.”

Kihyun stops and glances over, meets Changkyun’s gaze. Nods. “Do you always speak in vague poeticisms when you’re drunk?”

“You don’t remember that first time we got drunk together?”

Kihyun blinks, purses his lips together, then puffs out a laugh. “You mean when you tied the Twister mat around your neck like a cape and ate an entire jar of applesauce?”

“Right. The same night you got hard while we watched  _ Aladdin _ when Jasmine was stuck in the hourglass, and you had to excuse yourself to my basement restroom for fifteen suspicious minutes,” Changkyun replies.

“And then you came into the bathroom after me and pulled me into the empty bathtub and turned the water on us both.”

“And I told you it was because I could smell the post-boner on you,” Changkyun says, almost breathless with laughter. 

“Was it?” Kihyun also sounds breathless. Like the two of them are trapped in some oxygen-less vacuum or something. 

“Maybe,” Changkyun says, “maybe I just wanted to be in my bathtub with you.”

“Changkyun.” Kihyun stops, and it’s then Changkyun sees that the exit to the maze is only a short way away, the lights from the party beaming through the little gap in the corn. 

Changkyun stops beside him, slipping his hand down to Kihyun’s, gripping it. Their fingers aren’t aligned, so the hand-hold is just Changkyun grasping Kihyun’s limp palm. “Ki, listen: I don’t...I don’t care. I don’t care that you aren’t an Alpha, I don’t--”

“Changkyun, stop.”

“Ki,  _ please _ . You’re meant to be a part of my pack. You know you are. We were brought together for a  _ reason _ ; it’s--it’s  _ fate _ , and you know it.”

“Betas don’t join packs, Changkyun,” Kihyun grits out, trying to tug Changkyun toward the maze’s exit. Changkyun digs his heels stubbornly into the dirt.

“Who says? Everything is changing. You could join if you wanted to join. If you wanted to be with us.” There’s a pathetic Omegean whine echoing from the back of Changkyun’s throat. Kihyun tenses up again at the sound. His jaw clenches, and goosebumps bud up on his skin. A moment later, Kihyun shivers and tears himself from Changkyun’s grip.

“I don’t know if I want that anymore.”

“Anymore? So you did, right? Want that?”

Kihyun looks away at the exit and shrugs. “It doesn’t feel good to dwell on it, so I don’t.”

“Hoseok and I need you, Ki,” Changkyun pleads, but Kihyun has already started walking toward the sliver of light coming in. 

“You two seem fine from what I’ve observed.”

Changkyun watches until Kihyun steps out into the party before he drops to a squat, palms to his eyeballs, trying to fight the frustrated drunk tears. The fight is unsuccessful, and Changkyun is drunk crying in a corn maze to the sweet sounds of “Sandstorm” on repeat.

Some time later, he assumes, Hoseok and Hyunwoo come through the maze with flashlights and find him squatting against the wall of corn by the exit. 

They exchange glances. 

“Kyunnie, you’re very close to the exit,” Hoseok says tentatively.

“Are you tired? Too drunk? You want us to carry you?” Hyunwoo offers.

Changkyun finds himself picturing Hyunwoo carrying him out of the maze as Kihyun watches, and he feels sick with some bizarre sense of guilt. Why should he feel guilty for being who he has always been? 

“Yeah,” he answers finally. “Carry me.”

Hyunwoo scoops Changkyun up onto his back, big warm hands firm on Changkyun’s thighs. 

“Can I stay with you guys again?”

“Check in with Taekwoon first,” Hyunwoo says, and Changkyun presses his nose to Hyunwoo’s shoulder and inhales. 

“Do you ever think about going solo?”

Hyunwoo squeezes Changkyun’s thighs and shakes his head. “Never.”

“You know I don’t think you guys aren’t enough, right?”

Hyunwoo lowers Changkyun down to his feet by the party bus and presses his thick soft lips to Changkyun’s forehead. “I know, Changkyun. There’s a difference between being enough and being everything.”

Changkyun flickers his gaze over to where Kihyun is picking up red cups from the ground and tossing them into a big black garbage back Minhyuk’s holding open. 

“Maybe I just need to finally reevaluate what ‘everything’ means.”

“Mm,” Hyunwoo agrees, looking off to where Hoseok is chatting with Hakyeon and Taekwoon. “So...You wanna come over and sit on my dick while Hoseok watches?”

Changkyun’s grimace shifts into a bright beaming grin. “Oh _ hell yeah _ . Lemme tell Taekwoon.”

“Don’t--not those words exactly, please!”

“TAEKWOON!” Changkyun shrieks, sprinting head-on at Taekwoon like an offensive lineman, “I’M GOING TO THE ALPHA DORM TO SIT ON HYUNWOO!”

Taekwoon, appalled, grabs Hakyeon and holds him out in front of himself like a shield.

Hakyeon, equally appalled but also pleased at the contact, kicks his foot out to stop Changkyun in his tracks. 

“Fine. But you better keep it down. Some people actually sleep in our dorm.”

And he does. Hands braced on Hyunwoo’s broad shoulders, thighs straining as he rocks himself down over his thick Alpha cock, Changkyun lets Kihyun’s words fall away into thin air. Hoseok bites at the back of Changkyun’s neck and grasps his hips to work him down harder over Hyunwoo. 

“Good boy, Kyunnie,” Hoseok breathes, words hot as they ghost over the slick skin of Changkyun’s throat. “Do you feel better?”

“Yes, but touch me, please, touch me--”

Hoseok reaches around, grips Changkyun tight in his fist and jerks him hard and fast like he needs, and Changkyun comes, wondering if he can hold onto this as his new feeling of everything, everything at once, everything all around him, forever.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Zip-ties and Mai-tais

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hi, i love you so please enjoy this self-indulgent garbage  
> also follow me on twitter and be my friend @likesatellitez

There are many things Changkyun adores about Hyungwon.

The way he smiles when he passes a small dog wearing tiny rain boots. The way he sleeps with his lips slightly parted, wheezing a little as he breathes. The way he looks like one of those Pinterest food crafts of a hotdog doll with uncooked spaghetti for limbs but somehow dances like a sexy R&B video Omega in a camo crop top.

But the thing Changkyun adores most about Hyungwon is how eagerly he allows Changkyun into the comfort of his arms when he’s still peacefully asleep. It’s like when Hyungwon is sleepy, all of his reservations about PDA, about how  _ embarrassing feelings are _ just vanish, and all he wants to do is snuggle. 

Changkyun, having woken up at 4:30am after a dream where he’d been chased through his old high school by a group of his knife-wielding peers, only to approach a dead end where Kihyun stood, waiting with a smile. Changkyun remembers how his dream self had rushed into dream Kihyun’s arms, pulled Kihyun to him, his lips, his lips felt so real and then--

And then he was dead. He’d looked down between his and Kihyun’s bodies, and Kihyun had punched through his chest and stood peering into the empty cavity of Changkyun’s body. 

And then Changkyun had woken up. And Hyungwon, on the other side of their dorm triple with Jooheon, looked so peaceful and calm and sweet with his fluffy duck lips parted to release heavy breaths. Changkyun had clambered out of his bed quietly and padded in his slippers the measly few feet between his and Hyungwon’s bed (because Mother Goddess knows the last time they Swiffered this floor), and when he’d kicked the slippers off and climbed up into Hyungwon’s dorm bed, Hyungwon had rolled towards him, arms open, grinning even in sleep. 

And now Changkyun has his nose pressed to Hyungwon’s neck, coiled completely around his narrow frame, and everything smells like chilled stone fruit and also that fried chicken they’d ordered at like midnight last night after six straight hours of studying. 

Hyungwon, croaking in his sleep, asks, “Everything ok, Kyunnie?”

Changkyun nuzzles in closer and sighs. “It’s probably dumb to say  _ bad dream _ , huh?”

Hyungwon laughs, hoarse and low, and Changkyun presses in even closer. “Go back to sleep, dumb baby. It’s Saturday. You know, the day we sleep.”

“Do you think he’ll come?”

“Who?” Hyungwon murmurs, already mostly back asleep.

“No one,” Changkyun whispers back, wriggling in as close as two bodies can possibly get, aside from chemically fusing into one crude, disgusting franken-creature.

“I love you, Kyunnie,” Hyungwon mutters, and it doesn’t answer Changkyun’s question, but it may as well have.

 

When they wake up, it’s well past noon, and Jooheon had at some point in the early morning also crawled into Hyungwon’s little twin dorm bed, and now Changkyun is sandwiched between their two bodies--one long and lanky and full of sharp edges, the other warm and soft and baby-sweet. 

Jooheon yawns and tugs Changkyun back against his chest. “Had a bad dream.”

Changkyun feels Hyungwon trying to drag him back closer to his own body, and he laughs softly, reaching out to brush Hyungwon’s bangs away from his eyes. To Jooheon he says, “Me too. Did yours involve knives and being brutally murdered by your one true love?”

Jooheon pauses, even the sound of his breath disappearing for a moment, before he mutters, “I dreamt I...with... _ Minhyuk _ .”

Changkyun presses his lips together, but the snorting giggle still bursts through his nostrils, causing Hyungwon to stir and groan groggily. “Your  _ bad dream _ was a  _ sex dream _ ?”

Jooheon slaps his hands onto Changkyun’s mouth from behind, mostly covering his nose and chin before finding his lips. Changkyun proceeds to lick his palm aggressively until Jooheon hisses and wipes his spit-slick hands onto Changkyun’s neck. 

“You’re gross.”

“ _ I _ didn’t have a sex dream about Minhyuk Lee.”

“How  _ dare you _ . You’ve  _ actually _ fucked him! This is no contest!”

Changkyun leans his head back until he can roll his eyes up all the way to vaguely make out Jooheon’s face in the bright afternoon light streaming through their curtains. “We’ve never technically fucked, actually.”

Jooheon blinks slowly. “What do you mean?”

Changkyun’s lips spread into a condescending grin. “I mean his penis has never entered by--”

Jooheon shoves his fingers into Changkyun’s open mouth. “How did you get to be so vulgar, Changkyun Im?”

“I was never taught restraint. Well, I mean, I restrain myself a little. Because otherwise I’d just be naked all the time and rolling around in leaves with all my friends and they’d also be naked and we’d--”

“I get it. You’re a freak.”

“Don’t knock what you don’t know, Honey. It feels good to let go.” Changkyun rolls over, so he’s facing Jooheon with his back to Hyungwon’s chest, and Hyungwon’s arms fold over Changkyun’s waist. Changkyun drags his eyes from Jooheon’s flushed cheeks down to where he’s clearly hard in his gray sweatpants. “Honey bee, aren’t you gonna--?”

Jooheon shakes his head, swallowing audibly in the quiet of their room. They keep their aircon off for the most part; Hyungwon runs cold, which is odd for a shifter, but he doesn’t have much meat on his bones, so it makes sense. 

“Are you embarrassed?”

Jooheon nods just slightly. “I don’t enjoy the fact that my body does these things without consulting me first.”

“Your body knows you better than you think, Honey,” Changkyun says, grabbing Jooheon by the hips and shifting him closer. He brushes just the pad of his thumb up the long line of Jooheon in his sweats. Jooheon shudders, muffling a whine into the pillow beneath his head. “I won’t tell anyone, okay?” 

Jooheon’s front teeth come down hard onto his bottom lip.

“It’s okay to want, Jooheon.”

“It’s just hormones, just chemicals in my brain and--”

Changkyun gently tugs Jooheon’s sweats down just enough to free his cock, and he’s clearly been hard for much too long, because he’s flushed deep red and leaking. 

“Are you pre-heat already? I thought we were synched.”

“I’m not...It’s just…”

“The dream,” Changkyun answers for him, loosely wrapping his fingers around Jooheon’s overheated skin. “You’ve never fucked an alpha before, right?”

Jooheon shakes his head. “You know I hate alphas, Kyun _ hhh _ ah,  _ fuck _ \--”

Changkyun drags his fingertips up the shaft of Jooheon’s cock, and he gives another hard full-body shudder. “Did he knot you? In your dream?”

Jooheon presses his face back into the pillow and really whines, with Changkyun fisting his cock harder now, twisting over the leaking head. He gives a brief nod, and Changkyun leans in to kiss his cheek. 

“Hey, it’s okay. Did you, uh. Did you know I’m allergic to pineapple?”

Jooheon shakes his head, still with his face buried in the pillow, his hips lifting up to rock into Changkyun’s touch. 

Changkyun tugs at Jooheon’s cock harder, feeling him pulse against his palm and fingertips, leaking all over and filling the room with the scent of clean baby powder and sweet brown sugar. “I’m allergic, and it makes my tongue swell up and throb, and it’s all very unpleasant, but pineapple is actually my favorite fruit. I crave it all the time, and I hate myself for it because it always makes me itchy, and it’s just all  _ very _ unpleasant.”

Jooheon jerks his hips forward, rutting himself through Changkyun’s tight fist. “Whazzat,  _ fuck _ , have t-to do with Alphas?”

“I just mean it’s natural to want things despite your common sense. Despite logic. Cravings aren’t meant to be rational. No one says ‘I really want to eat this entire ice cream cake because it will be good for my body, I believe.’”

Jooheon puffs out a laugh, sweat dripping from his forehead down to his jaw, and he’s close--Changkyun can feel him pulsing, can see the erratic way his hip stutter with each drag of Changkyun’s slick fingers.

“Sometimes you just have to eat the whole ice cream cake, Honey,” Changkyun says. “You have this beautiful body, Jooheon.” He runs his free hand up the line of Jooheon’s wide hip to his chest, thumbing gently at Jooheon’s hard nipple. Jooheon has to bite the pillow to keep down his moan. 

Behind him, Changkyun can feel Hyungwon rutting up against his ass. He cranes his head back, and Hyungwon is just barely awake, running on pheromones, and he looks so sweet with his eyes screwed shut tight, his jaw clenched as he seeks relief. 

“My beautiful idiots,” Changkyun whispers, rocking himself back against Hyungwon, who grips his hips tight and whines at the feeling. In front of him, Jooheon is nearly there, his whole body shivering and thrumming with need, and Changkyun loves his friends (his family) so much, especially like this, which might seem weird to anyone who doesn’t understand.

But Changkyun understands. There are so many different kinds of love, so many ways to show it, and he honestly feels bad for the people who don’t get it. Who will never experience a moment like this, where Jooheon is finally letting himself go, and Hyungwon, who is always so reluctant to show any kind of reliance on anyone else, is sweetly wrapped around Changkyun and rocking against him needily.

“It’s okay to think about it, Honey,” Changkyun murmurs, swiping away a frustrated tear from the corner of Jooheon’s eye. “It feels good. It feels so good to get knotted. It’s like letting yourself fill up with perfectly warm water, like your whole body is this deep empty thing, and suddenly you’re so full, and it’s too much and just right at the same time, like you’re overflowing onto the shore and water is just pushing at the banks of your body, and--”

“Cut the metaphor, Kyunnie, just--”

“It feels so fucking good, Jooheon,” Changkyun murmurs sweetly, lips against Jooheon’s throat. “Dilating your body to let them in completely, and  _ Goddess _ , it’s like nothing you ever thought you could feel. So hot and big and full and tugging at your rim as it swells--”

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Jooheon hisses, hips jerking as he curls in on himself and spills his release over Changkyun’s fingers. Changkyun works him through it, stroking until Jooheon rolls onto his stomach and hides his body away from the sensitivity. 

Behind him, Hyungwon is whining low in his throat in the way that is pure Omega, despite his gravely voice, and he holds Changkyun against him as he finally stills his hips, shuddering gently and presumably coming in his light blue boxer briefs. 

Changkyun knows he’s hard too, but he doesn’t make any move to get himself off. He feels good, he feels fulfilled regardless. It’s probably close to 1pm now, and all three of them have the blanket kicked off from the heat of their bodies, and their door creaks open.

“It smells like a Yankee Candle store in here,” Hongbin says, standing in the doorway. “You guys know it’s Zip-ties and Mai-tais tonight, right?”

“Don’t worry, we can get off more than once a day, old man,” Changkyun replies, yawning behind his palm. 

“I wasn’t worried about your refractory period, you little pervert,” Hongbin scoffs. “But Taekwoon is coming around soon, and he’s gonna wonder where his latte is.” He grins, and he just has too many perfect white teeth, like some kind of beautiful celebrity shark. 

Changkyun rolls over Jooheon’s prone body in the bed and onto the floor, hastily rushing to his hamper to pull on the cleanest pair of jeans he has and a zip-up hoodie with no shirt underneath. 

“I’m going, I’m going!” Changkyun cries, shoving his feet into his sneakers without socks like some kind of smelly heathen. “Please don’t tell Taekwoon I forgot about his latte! I got caught up at the shop! Long line! Please, Hongbin, I’ll do anything!”

Hongbin just stands there smirking sharkily, but eventually he nods. “Fine, but you’re not allowed to skip the tequila luge tonight by claiming to be allergic to tequila. I’ve seen your medical records. You have no such allergy.”

“First of all,” Changkyun says, nearly out of breath from hastily brushing his hair and digging for his wallet on his desk piled high with books and papers and empty Gatorade bottles, “the fact that you’ve seen my medical records is disconcerting, but I’ll come back to that later. Second of all,  _ fine _ I’ll do the luge, but you won’t like me on tequila, I promise you.”

“I don’t like you off tequila,” Hongbin says, but the corners of his lips are twitching in a smile.

“Lie to yourself all you want, handsome, but everyone likes me,” Changkyun replies, patting Hongbin on the shoulder as he sprints out the door and down the dorm steps and continues sprinting all the way to the COOL STORY, BREW. 

It isn’t until he’s already inside, panting and dripping with sweat, unzipping the top of his hoodie (which was a terrible idea in the first place), that he realizes Kihyun will be working. Obviously. Which he knew. 

And there he stands, in the nearly empty shop (because it’s already 1:30pm and the morning rush is long gone), looking startled and perplexed and so devastatingly handsome.

He must’ve gotten his hair cut since the last time Changkyun saw him, because the sides are shaved close to his skull, and the top hangs long and pretty over his forehead. The reddish tinge that Changkyun remembers had always emerged after exposure to the sunlight, is bright under the lights of the cafe. 

Changkyun looks down at himself. At his sweaty exposed collarbones and his lightwash skinny jeans with grass-stained knees from when he had challenged Hyunwoo to a wrestling match on the quad and had lost in less than three seconds. At his dumb Jansport backpack, which he’d had to use to hold his wallet because his jeans don’t have pockets large enough, hanging from his hand and dangling just above the wood floor. 

“Uh,” Changkyun says, still mostly out of breath, “hi.”

Kihyun sighs, approaching the register. “Latte, right?”

“Oh,” Changkyun breathes out, stepping closer, his fringe limp with sweat in his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Anything else?”

“Can I just get a water?”

Kihyun nods his head at the table where the sugar and milk stands, and there’s a water jug and plastic cups. 

“Right. I knew that. Just the latte then.”

Kihyun doesn’t say anything as he quickly types in the order, and Changkyun watches as his name shows up on the screen. There’s no one else in the shop, but Kihyun is still meticulous enough to feel the need to follow best practice, as if someone could magically appear, steal his latte, and claim it as their own or something.

“Hey, um,” Changkyun says, slipping his card into the card reader and typing in his PIN number. “Listen.”

“Listening,” Kihyun replies, ripping out Changkyun’s receipt and sliding it across the counter. He moves quickly to the espresso bean grinder, carefully measuring and tamping the grounds down. Changkyun wonders what he’s like when its busy in here. If he’s just as careful and methodical when there’s a long line or orders pending. Do people bark complaints at him for wanting everything to be perfect? 

Because Changkyun knows that there’s always something gnawing at Kihyun to be perfect. There’s some voice in his chest cavity that echoes up his larynx and somehow up, up into his skull, saying  _ if you don’t do it right, don’t do it at all _ .

And maybe that’s why. Maybe that’s why he worked so hard to pull away from the future they planned.

Because he can’t be what he promised, so he can’t be perfect. 

“I want us to be friends,” Changkyun says. “Please.”

Kihyun’s fingers fumble with the little metal pitcher of milk, but he corrects himself and stands with rigid shoulders and steams the milk in a perfect swirl with the perfect consistency. 

“I think you have plenty of friends already, don’t you?”

“No one like you.”

Kihyun tips the pitcher over the tilted travel cup and rocks it back and forth to make a row of perfect foam hearts. Before he can cram the lid on the top, Changkyun reaches across the counter to snatch it from him, and he snaps a picture of the perfect latte design. 

“You’re really good at that,” Changkyun says, sheepishly snapping the lid on now that he has the picture. “Would have thought you’d want to brag about it.”

“My coworkers are much better than I am.”

“Doesn’t mean you aren’t good. Taekwoon said your latte was the best he’d had in a while.”

Kihyun drops his gaze to the floor, ears flushing pink, his chin wrinkling in embarrassment. “Is that supposed to be a major compliment or something?”

“Taekwoon is the scariest Omega you’ll ever meet, honestly. He’s like one of those feral street cats that yowls for food, and if you don’t feed him he sneaks into your apartment to destroy all your stuff.”

“Right,” Kihyun says, giving one small huff of a laugh. “Sounds familiar.”

“I am  _ not _ scary.”

Kihyun arches an eyebrow, and Changkyun’s gut gives a sharp tug. “No? So you’ve never done a camp talent show dance skit with me where instead of tapping me gently under the chin, you pretended to snap my neck? In front of all of our parents?”

“Okay, so I may have gotten temporarily overwhelmingly embarrassed and compensated by miming a violent act, but to be fair, you were looking at me like you wanted to eat me in front of everyone we knew and--”

“And what?”

“And all the bubbles in my tummy floated up to my brain and crossed all my wires all wrong, and I just freaked out.”

Kihyun gives a little smirk. “I flustered you.”

“Of course you did, Ki,” Changkyun huffs. “And you always knew it.”

Kihyun drops his gaze again, shaking his head slowly. “Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“Because I built myself up as this great thing for you,” Kihyun answers, clenching his jaw for a second. “And now I’m just this.”

Changkyun knows Taekwoon’s latte is getting cold, which will be unacceptable, but he can’t walk away, not when Kihyun is finally really talking to him. 

“Just what? Super fucking hot and clearly still good at absolutely everything?”

Kihyun grabs a wet rag and drags it over the already spotless countertop so he doesn’t have to look at Changkyun anymore. “If you want to be friends, fine. But we can’t...we can’t. More.”

“Ki, I--”

The bells over the door jingle, and Changkyun freezes, words dying in his throat as a group of students come in with backpacks and textbooks, clearly in for the long haul.

Kihyun gives him a little smile and says, “Don’t forget your water. I hear we’ll be drinking a lot tonight.”

Changkyun’s heart inflates like a frog’s throat at the word  _ we _ . “Yeah. Tequila luge. Mai-tais galore.”

“See you there.”

“Yeah,” Changkyun breathes, feeling warm down to his bone marrow, like it’s melting and seeping out into his blood. Like his insides are now a delicious soup.

 

Zip-ties and Mai-Tais starts like every other fraternity party. Mu Chi Alphas and Mu Chi Omegas all crowd into the damp, dank basement of Mu Chi Alpha frat house and mingle for a bit, “enjoying” the tequila ice luge that drops a shot of tequila down a slide of gorgeous clear ice and into a little plastic cup because their shot glass budget was spent on the gorgeous clear ice luge and very little else. 

Changkyun smacks his lips together post-shot and hisses in the back of his throat. “Eugh, thank fuck that shit is ice cold because otherwise I’d be pulling it right back up. Shit is vile.”

Jooheon, easily throwing back a shot, laughs loudly in the even louder basement filled with booming music and shouting. “You just don’t like it because tequila makes you embarrassing. Even more embarrassing than normal,” he adds, when Changkyun raises his brows. 

“The last time I took shots of tequila like this, I distinctly remember begging Hyunwoo to  _ quote _ Eat me alive, it’s fine, I want it, please put my whole body in your mouth  _ end quote _ .”

“Yeah that was fuckin hysterical. Hyunwoo looked like he wanted to wrap you in bubble wrap and throw you off a bridge.”

“He should’ve,” Changkyun sighs, quieting when Hakyeon and Taekwoon enter the basement with a bucket of names to pick zip-tie partners. Changkyun notices they’re already tied together, Taekwoon’s bony wrist starkly pale beside Hakyeon’s deep golden skin. 

“Goddess they’re cute,” Hyungwon says, throwing back his ice luge shot and grimacing. “When will they bless us with the glory of their official union.”

“Soon,” Hongbin says ominously, appearing out of thin air. “Soon.”

Changkyun spots Kihyun because he always spots Kihyun first. He’s standing by the bar in the little side room, leaning against the old ledge where there used to be a fireplace back when the house was an actual home and not a dorm of gross Alphas. Hoseok and Minhyuk are there too, prodding him in his sides and making his face scrunch up like a weird awkward little Dad having his picture taken in front of a national monument. 

Changkyun is glad he gets to see Kihyun laugh again, even though his laugh is gross and ugly. 

Hakyeon clears his throat, and everyone shushes immediately. He shakes the bucket tauntingly. Changkyun can see that he and Taekwoon are holding it together with their bound hands. “Well now. What’s a Zip-ties and Mai-tais party without the zip-ties, huh? Now you know we are inclusive of all sexualities and genders, so unlike other frats we don’t pair up by Alpha/Omega. I’ll pick one slip, and Taekwoon will pick the other, so it isn’t biased, but you could be tied to anyone.”

For some reason, Hakyeon’s gaze settles firmly on Changkyun, and he feels like his whole body is collapsing inward. 

“First up,” Hakyeon announces, “Hyungwon and—“

Taekwoon rustles around in the bucket with his free hand. Quietly, he mutters, “Hoseok.”

Hyungwon’s head jerks in Hoseok’s direction so quickly that Changkyun is afraid for his safety. “Oh no.”

“Oh  _ yes, _ ” Changkyun and Hongbin gasp in unison. 

If there’s anything Hongbin loves more than witnessing the abject public humiliation of others, Changkyun would be thoroughly shocked to find out. 

Changkyun, on the other hand, feels only glee at the idea of Hyungwon and Hoseok bound together auspiciously so they can fall in love. Like a sleazy fraternity meet-cute.

Hyungwon walks over to Wonshik and allows for him and Hosoek to be zip-tied together at the wrist. The plastic loop is pulled in close to Hyungwon’s bony wrist, with just enough room for one finger to squeeze between his skin and the zip-tie, before Taekwoon circles the second zip-tie through Hyungwon’s loop and coils it around Hoseok’s wrist. The two of them glance self-consciously at one another for a moment before the attention is torn away from them with the announcement of the next couple pairings. 

Hyunwoo and Minhyuk are tied together, much to Changkyun’s chagrin, who had been hoping his session with Jooheon earlier would have spurred him into action. 

Changkyun is staring at Minhyuk, who is pretending not to stare at Jooheon in his tight black shorts like someone who wants desperately to peer right up at the solar eclipse but knows he will regret it when his eyeballs burn. 

Jooheon is zip-tied to little Jihoon, and the sight makes Changkyun want to crouch down and coo. And he’s honestly about to, after beginning to feel the tequila swishing around in his belly, but then Hakyeon is calling his name, and Taekwoon’s sweet little kitty voice mumbles “Kihyun” right after, and Changkyun’s stomach drops down beneath the cement floor and takes root deep in the earth. 

Hongbin shoves Changkyun forward toward Wonshik, and he’s so aware of Kihyun moving through the crowd until he’s beside him, and everything inside Changkyun reacts the way he’s always reacted to Kihyun.

He holds his wrist out, smiling (hopefully) convincingly in Kihyun’s direction, as the two of them are bound together with industrial strength plastic. Changkyun wishes with all his being that Kihyun will start pumping out pheromones because he honestly cannot read his body language at all. He’s standing rigidly but grinning like this is quite the amusing game they’re playing, and beneath the grin there’s this tension at the corners of his sharp, dark eyes as if someone is squeezing an overripe lemon onto his every taste bud one by one. 

The two of them leave the center of the slowly forming circle of fraternity members waiting to be paired together, and they head to the bar, where Sanghyuk is in charge of preparing the gigantic vat of Mai-tai concoction. Well, supposedly Mai-tai. Changkyun has never bothered to actually look up what’s in a Mai-tai, but he assumes rum, considering the pile of plastic jugs of Sailor Jerry discarded in the corner behind the bartop. And...is that orange juice concentrate powder?

Sanghyuk slides two Mai-tais across the counter and clicks his tongue sweetly at Changkyun. “Awww our widdle babyboy is all grown up and seducing betas.”

Changkyun grabs a drink and shoves it into Kihyun’s free hand, crossing their arms to take a couple shot, Kihyun’s drink perched in front of his lips. “We’re friends. We’re friends who drink Mai-tais together. No seduction here. Go wallow over how Jaehwan won’t let you knot him and don’t do that weird aegyo baby voice at me again, thanks.” He downs Kihyun’s entire cup in one long sip and waits for Kihyun to grimace through Changkyun’s cup against his mouth.

Sanghyuk chokes on a loud barking laugh and reaches across the bar to ruffle Changkyun’s hair. “I forgot tequila makes you so spicy.”

Changkyun sighs in exasperation and grabs another Mai-tai from the bartop to get him through the next fifteen minutes. He sees Jooheon and Jihoon standing with Hyunwoo and Minhyuk, and he drags Kihyun behind him across the room until he reaches them. Jooheon is obviously trying to communicate with Changkyun, and Changkyun assumes it’s sympathy for Changkyun’s unfortunate forced bond with his lost first love, and it makes his chest cavity echo with sorrow. 

Man that tequila was a lot, huh.

“So Kihyun, I guess you’re a permanent fixture at these things now?” Jihoon asks, blinking up at Kihyun in a way that on anyone else Jihoon’s size and stature would be adorable but is somehow incredibly threatening.

Kihyun clears his throat uncomfortably, so Changkyun butts in with a little, “I’m glad. I’m glad you’re here.”

Kihyun lightly elbows Changkyun in the side in thanks, and it feels right.

They sip their Mai-tais quietly, listening to Minhyuk explaining how his mom had called him during his cartography class the other day to tell him his brother had impregnated some Omega he met at a bar.

“I thought she’d have been so pissed, but she sounded...elated? Like she thought she’d never have grandkids, and even though the circumstances aren’t great, she’s still just thrilled that there will be a baby. She’s not even making them mate, as long as the kid is allowed to see them a lot. It’s bizarre. My mom was always staunchly pro-knotting only in a mated pairing.”

Jooheon splutters on his drink at the word  _ knot _ , and Changkyun can smell the sugary sweetness of his arousal swelling up around them. 

Trying to change the subject rapidly, Changkyun blurts, “So I totally had a dream about my Geology professor the other day.”

Everyone turns to stare at Changkyun, which is what Changkyun had wanted, but it feels wrong, when Kihyun is blinking at him darkly. 

“Wait...Mr. Moon?” Hoseok says, approaching with Hyungwon, who is absolutely beyond flustered, whole body thrumming with pheromones. 

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t,” Changkyun defends. “He’s like…”

“Capable of ripping you in half and feeling little remorse?” Hyungwon replies, and Hoseok turns to face him, giggling. Hyungwon looks pleased as punch. 

To keep the mood going, Changkyun says, “I bet he’s totally feral. Just brutal.” He sighs as he says it, and he isn’t lying, really. Changkyun has always had a thing for big, overwhelming Alphas with strong hands and dangerous ruts.

But no one has ever made his gut soar up into his throat and beat rapidly like a weird, gross second heart quite like Kihyun.

Kihyun who looks like he’s been slapped suddenly, turning his face down to stare at his feet. 

Changkyun wants to rip his own tongue out and flush it down the fraternity basement toilet. Which has seen a lot of fucked up stuff. 

To once again change the subject, Changkyun says, “So Hyungwon, how’s about those boxers you totally jizzed in this morning against my bum?”

Hyungwon opens his mouth and shuts it, moving like some kind of delirious snapping turtle with a mouth fulla something sticky, and Changkyun is pretty sure he’s said something dumb again. But then Hoseok turns to Hyungwon, smirking and stage-whispering to Hyungwon behind his palm, “His ass is really fun to jizz on, right?”

And Hyungwon, gone as he is for Hoseok, just nods deliriously. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “Soft.”

Changkyun steps a little into the little conversation circle to whack Hoseok in the chest. “Enabler.”

Hoseok winks and ignores him. 

Changkyun sips bitterly at his Mai-tai, feeling the heat of Kihyun’s skin so close to his own. Kihyun won’t stop looking down at his feet now, at the cracked basement cement floor, and Changkyun just wants him to  _ look up _ , and that’s when it hits him.

The scent.

Jooheon, blinking in a haze as Minhyuk lifts up onto his toes to bite at the thick tan column of Hyunwoo’s neck. The scent of Jooheon wafts out, and Changkyun can recognize it quickly because he knows Jooheon almost as well as he knows himself. Jooheon’s eyes are latched onto where Minhyuk’s hips are pressed up against Hyunwoo’s side as he leans in to whisper something in his ear.

And then it hits the rest of the room.

Jooheon weakly collapses back against the basement wall that’s slick with condensation from the humidity of so many hot-blooded bodies crammed into one place. Jihoon cries out, face flushed, and his body bends over so he can clutch at his lower belly as the scent hits him hard.

Something in Changkyun wants to yell out  _ FIRE _ because the situation seems similar to something he’s seen in a movie. A small flame sparking up somewhere obscure, under someone’s seat or in the projection room, and then suddenly the scent of smoke hits one person and it’s all they can do to just yell  _ FIRE  _ and panic.

Changkyun turns around just in time to see the Omegas quickly pulling their shirts up to their noses to block the scent, some of them already doubled over as the heat-induced cramping hits. 

Taekwoon--always the prepared dorm head--rushes over with a pair of chef scissors to cut the zip-tie holding Jihoon to Jooheon. Jihoon bolts for the stairs, with Mingyu and Seungcheol gripping him under the shoulders like wobbly Alpha crutches. A swarm of Omegas follows, some being corralled by Alpha friends, but a unsettling amount of Alphas held back with wide eyes and dilated pupils, tight fists and sweat dripping down clenched jaws. 

Changkyun can feel the cramps twitching deep, deep in his belly like the ghost sensation of the kind of touch his body craves. Kihyun finally realizes what’s happening, and his cheeks flush as he notes the way Changkyun squirms in his skinny jeans because of the slick pooling between his legs. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Kihyun hisses, jostling their bound wrists. 

“Wait, but Jooheon. Jooheon is...Jooheon needs--”

Minhyuk grabs the chef scissors from Taekwoon and cuts himself free from his tie to Hyunwoo. “I’ll take him to the infirmary.”

“He’s--He’s early--” Changkyun whines, reaching to grab Minhyuk’s wrist. “He probably just needs a suppressant.”

Minhyuk nods and lets Hyunwoo lift Jooheon up onto Minhyuk’s back so he can cart him up the stairs and out onto the path to the college infirmary, where nurses are always on-call for emergencies like these. A school full of mostly unmated young adults with absolutely raging pheromones and hormones, and you’ve got to be prepared for anything at all times.

Kihyun cuts their zip-ties apart and drops the scissors to the ground before he allows Changkyun to drag him up the basement stairs after them, and he even turns to face the crowd of almost-zombified Alphas trailing behind the scent of Jooheon to hiss “ _ Back off, you mindless horny imbeciles _ .”

Hakyeon skips up the steps to stand between the crowd and Kihyun, and he smiles sweetly between gritted teeth. “If I find out any of  _ my _ dorm children have stalked these poor Omegas through campus, I will personally,  _ personally  _ make each of your lives a living hell.” Someone below them on the steps must’ve raised a hand or started to speak because Hakyeon follows up with, “Did I call for a Q&A? All of you are now on clean-up duty. If I see any red cups on this floor tomorrow morning, there will be  _ pain _ .”

There’s a resounding groan that fills the upstairs hallway as Changkyun rushes out after Jooheon piggy-backed on Minhyuk. 

Changkyun tries to dart down the path to the infirmary after them, but Kihyun holds him back. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, holding Changkyun still with a palm to his chest. “You don’t want to get too close anyhow. It’ll...you know. With the pheromones.”

“We’re supposed to be synched,” Changkyun whimpers, still a bit zonked from the combination of liquor and close proximity to heat scent.

“Let’s get you some air, huh?”

Changkyun allows Kihyun to lead him up the path to the library. It’s the oldest building on campus, technically. Changkyun heard a rumor it was once a place for Beta religion. A church or something. From what he’s seen in the movies, he could believe it, too. The floor is polished granite, and the ceilings are so tall that all sound echoes hauntingly all the way up to the glass tops of the giant windows.There’s something austere and also creepy about the whole building, but maybe that’s just a reflection of how much Changkyun despises studying. And books. Book learnings. Just the worst.

Kihyun drags Changkyun up four flights of granite stairs, and Changkyun is pretty winded by the time he opens a heavy wood door that leads out onto the Library rooftop.

“Oh...fuck. Fuck that’s. This is so cool, Ki,” Changkyun breathes, stepping out to where the tall outer walls of the clock tower surround them and the only things they can see are the stars. 

The blessed thing about living in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by trees, at a college with very minimal light pollution (buncha nature-loving freaks), is that the stars are never any brighter than they are here at night.

And it seems like Kihyun, who’s only been at the school for a month or so now, already knows this really well. He leads Changkyun to what looks like an old sheet laid right in the middle of the brick, held down with piles of old books. Changkyun points at it and starts laughing under his breath. 

“You. Are. A. Grandpa.”

Kihyun swats at Changkyun’s raised finger and growls, “You used to love climbing to high places and falling asleep. Like, say, remember when you vanished during our partnered camping and hiking trip, and I found you a day later, curled up in your sleeping bag, thirty feet above the ground in the canopy of trees? Like some kind of...lemur baby? Here I was, terrified out of my mind that you’d been devoured by a grizzly, and you were just rocked to sleep peacefully in the trees.”

Changkyun presses his lips together to keep down another bubbling laugh, and he drops onto his back on the thin off-white sheet. “This is corny, even for you. You come up here to study?”

“Yeah,” Kihyun says, folding his legs beneath him and dropping down beside Changkyun. “The Library is always so distracting. Everyone is always flirting or throwing things.”

“Welcome to college, ya old weasel,” Changkyun says, throwing his arms wide in a dramatic gesture. “Isn’t it thrilling though? Never know who is gonna melodramatically drop heat slick right in the middle of Zip-ties and Mai-tais, eh?”

Kihyun folds his forearms over his eyes and heaves a deep sigh. “Please don’t ever say ‘drop heat slick’ ever again.”

“Why, are you aroused?”

Kihyun huffs and turns onto his side, facing Changkyun. And, Goddess, he’s so gorgeous like this. Cast in moonlight, with his knife-sharp jaw and crinkled eyes and pale, pale skin. Changkyun remembers when he’d get sun in every pore and would turn a sweet golden color that would bring out the amber in the strands of his hair. 

“I don’t really get aroused much anymore,” Kihyun admits, biting at the inside of his cheek. 

“Does that happen? You. I mean, you used to. Obviously.”

“Why obviously?” 

“Because I have the distinct memory of sitting in your lap one night after the all-camp tug-of-war, and you were all sweaty and pumped full of adrenaline, and my ass was definitely cheek-to-shaft with your hard little man in your cargo shorts.”

“I did  _ not _ wear cargo shorts,” Kihyun protests.

Changkyun wriggles closer on the sheet, putting his nose just inches from Kihyun’s, and he says, “Oh, they were most definitely cargo pants. A delicious murky khaki color, with so many fun pockets for accessories.”

Kihyun shoves his hands against Changkyun’s cheeks, squishing them together until his lips pop open. “Listen, little cretin, if anyone finds out about my  _ adventure shorts _ \--”

Changkyun rolls toward Kihyun until his hands release from his cheeks, and Kihyun is forced to grab hold of Changkyun’s shoulders to hold him still. But he’s already more than halfway rolled onto Kihyun’s chest, and it smells…

It smells like burning leaves and sunlight on river rocks. Changkyun feels his body reacting before he can do anything about it, his nose sliding up the length of Kihyun’s shoulder to his neck to his jaw, and Kihyun shakes beneath him, gasping out, “ Kkukkungie, what--”

“You smell,” Changkyun breathes, “like summer.”

“I don’t have a scent, Changkyun, I don’t-- _ ah _ \--”

Changkyun nips at the skin just below where Kihyun’s scent gland would be if he had one, and Kihyun jerks beneath him, arching up and gasping as he grips the material of Changkyun’s shirt. 

“I remember it. I remember this,” Changkyun says, sounding frantic even to his own ears, and there’s this desperation in the way his hands seek the bare skin just beneath the collar of Kihyun’s black t-shirt. 

“You must be misremembering,” Kihyun says, gently prying Changkyun’s hands away from his skin and scooting away. “I’ve never had a scent. I’ve never been anything.”

And it’s like as soon as the words are spoken, the scent is gone. Changkyun drops his hands to his sides and flops back down, spine hard against the brick beneath the sheet. He takes in a deep breath of still night air and wills the scent back into his senses. 

“That’s not true,” Changkyun sighs, staring up at the single satellite blinking among the constellations. He squeezes his eyes shut and thinks of the chill of creek water on his dirt-stained feet, of freckles blooming across Kihyun’s nose from the high afternoon sun, of the tang of salt and iced green tea that clung to Kihyun’s cupid’s bow when Changkyun would press their lips together late at night after sneaking into the woods, just to feel the rough bark of oak trees against his tailbone and the notches of his spine, just to taste the warm sweetness of Kihyun’s tongue, just to breathe in the scent of home all around them. “You’ve always been so much.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. CEOs and Corporate (Consenting) Hoes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: SURPRISE   
> plz come yell at me on twitter or leave comments i am thirsty @likesatellitez

“This is the official announcement,” Hongbin declares from their doorway, looking uncharacteristically rumpled, with his hair flying every which way and his cheek still imprinted with pillow creases, “that we’ve decided the CEOS AND CORPORATE HOES party is now CEOS AND CONSENTING HOES. As per Hakyeon. And, I guess, Taekwoon was there too.”

Changkyun blearily lifts his head from his pillow to mumble, “Can I still be mostly naked though?”

Jooheon throws his pillow across the room at Changkyun. “Tell him no, Hongbin. Please.”

Hongbin shrugs and raps his knuckles against the door frame. “The change is just about Omegas not feeling the need to dress a certain way. But if you  _ want _ to be a consenting hoe, then let it out, Kyunnie.”

Changkyun lifts a triumphant fist to the ceiling, and Jooheon groans, pulling his comforter over his head. “It’s just as powerful to make a statement pro-slut, Jooheon. You’re just mad because last year I forced you into those fishnets.”

Taekwoon peers into the room, his eyes narrowed. “No forcing of any kind this year. Or I’ll kill you. All of you. Even the bystanders.”

Hyungwon rolls over in his sleep and gurgles out, “We’ll be sure to tell Hakyeon how staunchly you preached his words, Taek.”

“Don’t bother getting me my latte today, Changkyun. I’m making Hyungwon do it now.” Taekwoon slams their door shut behind him and Hongbin.

Changkyun slowly awakens to Hyungwon running a round brush through his hair to fix his bangs. “You’re leaving?”

“Taek said I’m latte duty, remember?”

Changkyun swiftly rolls himself out of bed and hobbles on tingly feet around the room, picking up mostly-clean clothes and tugging them on. “I’m coming too.”

Hyungwon slants his eyes in suspicion. “Why?”

“No reason. Just want a coffee. Cravings. Aha,” Changkyun says, leaning down to look into Hyungwon’s vanity mirror, swiping his fringe this way and that before just ruffling it with his fingers and giving up.

Hyungwon remains in the doorway, wallet in hand, grimacing with skepticism. “You’re being weird--”

“I’m--”

“--er than normal.”

Changkyun checks the silhouette of his ass in his skinny jeans, wishing they were freshly washed and dried so they’d be even tighter. He tucks his thin white t-shirt in just to accentuate the soft rounded curve. “There now. All done. Not a big deal. Just casual. Just getting coffee and...”

“You have a stain on your shirt,” Hyungwon says, nodding at Changkyun’s chest. 

Changkyun panics and rips his shirt over his head to inspect the perfectly crisp white fabric. He blinks in confusion up at Hyungwon, who simply smirks. 

“Just casual? Just getting coffee?” Hyungwon repeats smugly.

Changkyun pulls his shirt back on, cupping his hands over his nipples in his shame, as if that will protect him from the feeling. “How rude. I can’t want to look good just going into public?”

Hyungwon pauses at the dorm stairwell leading down to the back door. “I’m sorry, are we forgetting the time you literally went to your Early History class with actual body fluids in your hair, and you told your classmates it was ‘yogurt,’ and they accepted it because a) they believe you absolutely would somehow get yogurt in your fucking hair at 9am and b) they also know not to question you showing up to a 9am class with fucking jizz on you.”

Changkyun draws in a dramatic gasp and shoves Hyungwon down onto the first step. He quickly catches his balance by grabbing the handrail, but he still turns to glare at Changkyun, who hisses,“Maybe it  _ really was yogurt _ , ok?”

Hyungwon sighs and continues down the stairs and out the front door into the bright afternoon sunlight. “I’m not sure how that helps your point, Kyunnie.”

Changkyun links their arms together and starts skipping on the sidewalk. Hyungwon keeps walking, his strides about the same as Changkyun’s whilst he skips. “So, did you have a good time with Hoseok last Saturday, frogbaby?”

“You mean before or after there was mass heat panic?”

“Either?”

Hyungwon shrugs. “I like him.”

Changkyun’s lips split into a shit-eating grin. “I  _ knew  _ it.”

“Everyone knows it, dumb-butt,” Hyungwon replies, shoving open the door to the cafe, and Changkyun pauses to check his reflection in the window out front. 

“Does Hoseok know? He’s pretty dense,” Changkyun says. “Literally and figuratively. He’s very dense.”

The shop is empty again, and Kihyun must be in the back roasting beans because no one is behind the register. Hyungwon approaches the counter and taps the little service bell. It isn’t until Kihyun is walking through the swinging back door, shoving his hair under his green ball cap, that Changkyun thinks to be embarrassed. 

Because that’s when Hyungwon turns to Changkyun, pale blonde eyebrow quirked, and hisses under his breath, “Aha. Gotchu.”

Kihyun glances between the now-incredibly-flustered Changkyun and Hyungwon. “Taekwoon’s latte, right?”

Hyungwon holds out his card, and Kihyun types in the order, and Changkyun’s stomach gives a rough sea-sick lurch when he sees Kihyun put his name in for the order. _ Latte, reg., Kyunnie. _

“Anything else?”

“I want something,” Changkyun blurts, quickly scanning the scribbled chalkboard menu above their heads. “Uh! Uh?! What’s good?”

Kihyun waves a hand at the sign. “I’m making it, so literally everything.”

Changkyun’s gaze swiftly lands back on Kihyun’s face, and he’s shocked to see Kihyun’s old characteristic smug little grin. “Right. Well then. Surprise me?”

Kihyun nods, printing the receipt without typing in anything else into their order. “If it sucks, I’ll give you a discount coupon.”

“And if it doesn’t suck?”

Kihyun starts grinding the beans and carefully tamping them down. “Well, I guess we’ll see.”

Hyungwon is giving both Changkyun and Kihyun the shifty eyes. “Why do I feel like I’m watching one of those nature documentaries where weird-looking birds prance around squawking for mates?”

Changkyun shoves his elbow hard into Hyungwon’s stomach. Hyungwon barely reacts. For a skinny legume-man, his stomach is pretty rock solid. “We’re just making conversation. Now why don’t you tell me more about how you want Hoseok’s knot to spear you open?”

Hyungwon buries his face in his gigantic palms, screams, and then slowly walks out of the cafe without saying anything more or waiting for his drink. Changkyun continues observing as he paces back and forth on the sidewalk, throwing his arms up at the clouds, still screaming. Moments later, he returns to the jingling of bells and comes to stand back at Changkyun’s side. His teeth are gritted in a terrifying pseudo-smile. 

“Did I embarrass you?” Changkyun whispers behind his palm. 

Hyungwon’s left eye begins twitching, and he slowly shakes his head back and forth. 

“You know I can introduce you two. Like, sexually,” Changkyun adds, grabbing Taekwoon’s latte from the counter and placing it gently in Hyungwon’s hand. For a second, he’s concerned Hyungwon will let it drop, as his eye continues to twitch, and he barely wraps his fingers around the paper cup. “You’re totally Hoseok’s type. He likes ‘em gangly. Like noodles. He  _ loves _ noodles. Ramen-sexual.” He pauses to make sure Hyungwon understands. “And you’re the ramen.”

Hyungwon places the cup back down on the counter and slowly exits the shop again. Changkyun watches as he once more paces the sidewalk out front, exclaiming and gesturing wildly up at the sky.

“I think you broke him,” Kihyun says, sliding Changkyun’s finished drink across the counter. He looks up from the little white puppy he’s created from cappuccino foam, and Changkyun can see the nerves settling at the corners of Kihyun’s eyes. 

“This is,” Changkyun says slowly, peering carefully down at the crema eyes, nose, and mouth drawn carefully in the mound of foam, “the cutest fucking shit I’ve ever fucking seen in my entire fucking life????”

Kihyun’s chin wrinkles as his lips press together into a slightly crooked smile. “Yeah? I saw a tutorial on Youtube. And I only had to watch it...53 times to get it memorized.”

Changkyun looks down at the foam and then back up at Kihyun. “But now I can’t drink it.”

“What, why?” 

“Because then all your hard work is just gone. Devoured. Swallowed in stomach acids and Goddess knows what else,” Changkyun says.

“I can make more,” Kihyun says, laughing softly in that way he does where his mouth literally forms the words hah hah and gently puffs them out. “Just drink it.”

Changkyun nods hesitantly and brings the lid to his lips, sipping the still-hot liquid. It has a hint of chocolate. And of oranges. The bitterness of an orange rind and the dark earthiness of cocoa. “Whoa, that’s. That’s like the--”

“Like the chocolates your dad would bring home from the airport when he’d go on business trips and would forget to bring you real souvenirs, yeah,” Kihyun finishes, looking every bit as proud of himself for remembering as Changkyun thinks he deserves to. He’s standing taller, almost posturing, and there’s that oh-so-very faint scent of warm wet earth again. Changkyun wants to lean over the counter, wants to fight through the heavier scent of orange peel and dark chocolate to find the even more comforting scent of peeled Oak tree bark and slick river rocks.

“Looked like real oranges made of chocolate, and we’d pretend to peel them and get our fingers all…” Changkyun wiggles his fingers in demonstration. “You know, chocolatey.”

Kihyun laughs again and nods. “Yeah. Chocolatey. I was always so jealous of you for having cool parents who traveled independently and brought you home stuff.”

“My upbringing had it’s rare perks, I guess,” Changkyun states, sucking some foam from his top lip. Kihyun watches the motion carefully. “But I’d have much rather been in a pack like yours.”

“Again, rare perks, I guess,” Kihyun responds. “Not so much fun when you come of age and are...you know.” His shoulders curl in protectively, making his torso seem so much smaller, and the scent of warm, thick summer air is gone again.

“Ki--”

“Your friend is still pacing outside. Can you go check on him? He might be scaring away customers,” Kihyun interrupts, wringing the rag hanging from his apron between his fists. 

“Are you a CEO or a Corpo--er, Consenting Hoe?” Changkyun blurts, not wanting to leave. 

Kihyun gnaws at the inside of his cheek for a moment, as if weighing whether responding will be worth it. “I’m whatever they tell me to be,” Kihyun says eventually.

“What. Wait...you mean?”

Kihyun shrugs his hands into the front pocket of his apron and rocks back on his heels. “Yeah, I’m pledging.”

“Oho my...oh fuck,” Changkyun gurgles, laughter bubbling up through his parted lips. “You are so totally fucked.”

Kihyun nods, but he’s smiling a little again, and it’s enough to suck the air right from Changkyun’s windpipe. “I heard talk of knee-high socks for pledges.”

And whatever air was left in Changkyun’s lungs collapses out of him at once as Changkyun’s mind sends him to a million different scenarios involving Kihyun’s bare legs and knee-high socks. “Oh.  _ Oh _ . Well,” Changkyun chokes out, “as long as you’re consenting in the wearing of...of the socks. Hakyeon is all about the consenting. The sock consent. Last year I made Jooheon wear fishnets. That was dubious consent. He didn’t like it, but once they were on he felt very pretty. Everyone told him so. Surprisingly pretty, really. But, again, dubious. Don’t let them force you into anything. Though I’m sure your legs would look real good. I mean averagely good. I mean they’d be all right or whatever.”

Changkyun feels it then.

The twisting in his lower belly as slick drips down the back of his left thigh.

“Oh no,” he mutters, grabbing the two drinks. “I gotta jet. I swear this has nothing to do with you wearing knee-high socks.”

“What doe--” it must hit Kihyun at that moment because his eyes go wide and dark, and his hands come down to grip the countertop. “Right. Right, yeah.”

“Wait, you...do you smell it?”

Kihyun blinks slowly like the words are lighthouse lamps beaming in through heavy fog. “Y-yeah, you must be very  _ potent _ .”

Changkyun shuffles backward toward the door without turning, afraid there will be a small puddle in his jeans. “I’m incredibly embarrassed right now and trying to hide it; how am I doing?”

“Well,” Kihyun says, swallowing thickly with eyes glued to Changkyun as he retreats, “you’re waddling backwards like a terribly confused duckling, but it could be worse.”

Changkyun can smell it again. Crumpled dried leaves held in his palms. Scattered pieces tossed over a small fire and smoke tinged with warm earthiness. It makes his legs wobble beneath him, and he practically collapses out the door, but Hyungwon is there to grab him before he hits cement. 

“I left you alone for like five minutes, and you’re a goddamn slick puddle,” Hyungwon scoffs, dragging Changkyun away down the sidewalk back toward the dorms. “Do you need a chaperone to be around him? That poor beta must’ve been so confused.”

“He said,” Changkyun mumbles to himself, “he said he could smell it.”

“That’s impossible,” Hyungwon says. “Maybe he just smelled your sweat. You’re looking pretty fucking sweaty, Kyunster.”

“Great. I wax poetic about sexy socks and then I get all stinky.”

Hyungwon pats the top of Changkyun’s head for a brief moment, before leaning down to press his nose to the crown of Changkyun’s head. “You really are very stinky.”

 

Changkyun is riding around the inside of Hoseok’s shopping cart as Hyunwoo tosses groceries from the shelves on top of him. “Are you guys gonna make Kihyun wear sexy socks?”

Hoseok jerks the cart to a sudden stop, and Hyunwoo subsequently tosses his box of Chex right onto the floor where the cart was meant to be. “Do you  _ want _ us to make Kihyun wear sexy socks?”

Changkyun opens his mouth but finds no words worthy of uttering. 

Hyunwoo throws the Chex down on top of him. “If you’re gonna perv on him in socks, we won’t make him wear socks. We want him to be comfortable with us, Changkyun.”

“Are you saying I make him uncomfortable?”

Hoseok and Hyunwoo exchange a very domestic, understanding glance. “Yes,” they say in unison.

“I’m hurt. We’ve had some very normal conversations recently. The other day, I ran into him outside the Library, and I said ‘hi, your hair looks nice today.’”

“Is that  _ really _ what you said,” Hoseok asks, shifting around the boxes already piled on top of Changkyun so he can exchange a Raisin Bran for a Raisin Bran Crunch. Changkyun clutches the box to his chest and narrows his eyes. 

“Yes, that’s what I said. Why, did he say I said something weird?”

“He said you told him his hair smelled nice. Not looked nice,” Hyunwoo says, helping Hoseok turn the cart around a sharp corner to the dairy aisle. “You can’t talk to him about scent, Changkyun.”

Changkyun pouts down at the boxes in his lap. “But it  _ did _ smell nice.”

“I think you’re projecting on him. It’s not your intention to be cruel but you need to be more aware,” Hoseok says, leaning over the handle of the cart to cup Changkyun’s cheeks from behind. Changkyun obediently blinks up at him with his head tilted backward. “Be a good boy now, Kyunnie.”

Changkyun’s pout puffs out even further. “I  _ am _ a good boy.”

“Do you want Hyunwoo to fuck your throat in the back of the fraternity van or no?” Hoseok taunts, flicking Changkyun’s puffed-out lip.

“How dare you,” Changkyun whines, “I  _ earned _ that throat-fucking.”

“Mhm,” Hoseok hums, “and it’s Hyunwoo’s dick, and he gets to decide whether he’s gonna give it to you.”

“ _ Hyunwoo _ \--” 

Hyunwoo turns back to the cart and leans over, one arm on either side, bracketing Changkyun’s body from above. “Do good boys throw tantrums in the Stop ‘N Shop?”

Changkyun slowly shakes his head. 

“There we go. Let’s go pay, and then you can help carry all the bags to the car,” Hyunwoo says, brushing the apple of Changkyun’s cheek with a warm, tan thumb.

Changkyun grabs each of the reusable canvas bags from the end of the checkout conveyor belt and tries to heave all seven of them up, but manages only three. Hoseok reaches over him and snags the last four, while Hyunwoo finishes paying and saves the receipt in his wallet to get reimbursed by the fraternity. 

“What do you guys do for hazing anyhow?” 

“We don’t haze,” Hyunwoo says, helping Changkyun slide the groceries into the trunk of the van. 

“Everyone hazes,” Changkyun scoffs, moving to slide into the passenger seat when Hoseok grabs him around the waist and throws him down on the reclined back row of seats. 

“I thought you wanted your throat fucked,” Hoseok says, climbing in after him as Hyunwoo gets into the driver’s seat. “Hyunwoo and I had a brief discussion and decided I’ll fuck your throat while he drives. We don’t have much time, and I can’t concentrate on driving if I smell you getting all wet on our backseat.”

Changkyun shifts, pressing the heel of his palm against where he’s started getting hard in his jeans. Hoseok grabs his hand at the wrist and tears it away, pinning it above his head on the reclined seat. 

“It feels weird fucking in a family van,” Changkyun mutters, wriggling beneath Hoseok as he hooks his thigh up between Changkyun’s legs and lets him rut up weakly against him. “God, Hoseok, your thighs are like freshly carved marble.”

“Never skip leg day,” Hoseok says, pressing just the tips of his teeth to Changkyun’s throat, teasing over his scent gland in the way that he knows drives Changkyun to that near-feral place. “Unzip me, baby.”

Changkyun licks his chapped bottom lip and shifts up, his arms held at his sides obediently, and he flicks the zipper with the tip of his tongue until he can clasp his teeth around the slightly raised ridge at the end. He nods his head down and tugs at the zipper with his front teeth. Hoseok scratches his nails down the back of Changkyun’s scalp, over the soft shaggy hair at the top, down to the fuzzy shaved bits at the back. Changkyun shivers, humming and leaning in to nuzzle the front of Hoseok’s slightly tented boxers once his jeans have been shimmied down. 

“I’m going to pull out of the lot, so put Changkyun’s mouth on you quickly,” Hyunwoo says, and Hoseok manhandles Changkyun so his mouth is hovering over his lap, Changkyun splayed sideways across the seat, invisible above the windows. Only Hoseok is visible in the back, which must look it’s own version of strange, perhaps even stranger than one person sucking another person’s dick in a suburban minivan. Now here’s Hyunwoo driving an entire soccer parent van with just one person sitting in the back and no front passenger. 

Hoseok weaves his fingers through Changkyun’s hair and slides the tip of his cock across Changkyun’s chapped lips. “You smell so good, baby,” Hoseok teases, yanking Changkyun’s head to the side with the hand in his hair, so Changkyun’s cheek is rubbing against Hoseok as he gets hard. 

“I think something’s in the air,” Changkyun whines, trying to crane his neck to flick his tongue against the underside of Hoseok’s cock. He does have incredible skill managing to touch his tongue to places people often aren’t able--well, mostly just to his own elbow. And to dicks. “I’ve been so wet lately.”

“Aren’t you always, though,” Hyunwoo says from the driver’s seat, carefully putting on his turn signal. 

Hoseok laughs and finally shoves Changkyun’s head down so his cock slides over Changkyun’s tongue and right to the back of his throat. Changkyun gags, eyes watering at the corners, but he rolls his gaze up to Hoseok’s face, knowing how much he loves to see Changkyun like this. Changkyun grips Hoseok’s firm thick thighs and holds on, letting Hoseok buck his hips up. 

Hyunwoo turns the radio down so he can listen to the obscene sounds of spit and sucking. Changkyun has always likened the sound to when you step in a puddle. That wet sock in wet boot squelching noise.

But there’s something obviously different about the sound. Knowing where it comes from. Changkyun feeling the weight of Hoseok heavy on his tongue as his jaw cramps, rubbing his own hips down against the ugly gray fabric of the van’s back seats. 

“I thought you were driving because this wouldn’t-- _ fuck _ ,  _ Kyunnie _ \--affect you,” Hoseok observes, head tipped back against the seat rest as he fucks into Changkyun’s mouth in short, quick strokes. 

“Your scents are so thick,” Hyunwoo gasps, switching to steering with his right hand as his left dips under the waistband of his sweats. 

“You want me to fuck you before the party tonight?” Hoseok breathes out, throbbing against Changkyun’s tongue as Changkyun fights to hold still. 

“Fuck,” Hyunwoo gasps, circling around the fraternity block, “yes. You better hurry up, though. We’re almost home. If you don’t finish soon, we’re gonna have to unload everything anyhow. There’s milk back there.”

Hoseok groans, pressing Changkyun down over the full length of his hard cock until Changkyun can only smell the pure dark earthiness of Hoseok’s skin, can only feel pulsing on his tongue as Hoseok’s release spills down the back of his throat in waves. 

Changkyun can hear the slick sound of Hyunwoo jerking off in the front seat, and he whines. Everything smells like pack. Like comfort. Like sex. Hyunwoo comes just as he pulls into the shared backlot of the fraternity house block.  

Hoseok finally slides his softening cock from Changkyun’s mouth and helps him sit up. He wipes his thumb over Changkyun’s swollen lips and presses a kiss to his nose. “Good boy. Now go get ready for the party. Make yourself real pretty.”

“I’m always pretty,” Changkyun says, throat thoroughly fucked out and voice raw. “But now I sound like Hyungwon when he wakes up.”

“Hyungwon,” Hoseok repeats, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Is he into...all this?”

Changkyun throws open the van door and clambers out. “I only give answers to alphas who let me  _ orgas _ \--oh.”

Kihyun stands at the Mu Chi Alpha front door, clearly waiting to help with the groceries. His hair is soft and loose over his forehead, and Changkyun misses his eyebrows for some inexplicable reason. “I see you guys got more than groceries.”

Hoseok and Hyunwoo round the back of the van with the canvas bags hanging from their thick muscular arms. “When he’s good and helpful, we like to reward him.”

“I’m sure that’s a rare occurrence,” Kihyun replies, and Changkyun’s eyes widen. There’s something playful in Kihyun’s tone. Something teasing. 

“Excuse you,” Changkyun says, his voice still rough and hoarse, “I’m the picture of obedience.”

“Puppy school dropout,” Kihyun taunts, and Changkyun’s heart lurches, threatening to beat right up out of his gaping mouth and onto the driveway. 

“Puppy school  _ Valedictorian _ ,” Changkyun protests, unsure why he’s arguing this point at all, since he’s never been to puppy school, as he is not a real puppy. 

“Right,” Kihyun says, taking two bags from Hoseok and stepping away from the doorway.

Changkyun turns to gape at Hoseok and Hyunwoo as they stand on the fraternity porch. “You saw that, right? He was  _ flirting _ with me.”

“He was being friendly,” Hyunwoo says, ruffling Changkyun’s hair as he passes. 

Hoseok pats Changkyun on the bum and adds, “Go get ready, baby. We’ll see you in a couple hours. Minhyuk got more Nip, too.”

 

In true Hakyeon fashion, the basement of the Mu Chi Alpha house has been transformed into a mockup of an office building, with what look like recycled fake wood desks and old wheelie desk chairs. Changkyun follows Hyungwon and Jooheon down the steps, mistakenly gliding his hand along the wooden bannister, which is always inevitably covered in some odd condensated liquid. He wipes his palm on the back of Hyungwon’s long black suit jacket, and he doesn’t even notice. 

Too busy staring at Hoseok in his own black blazer that strains over his broad chest and wide shoulders, tapering in at his much trimmer waist. 

“We get it, he’s hot,” Changkyun sighs, kicking Hyungwon down off the last step. “Now someone tell me how hot  _ I _ am.”

Jaehwan strides confidently out of the side bar room, his blazer long enough to graze the tops of his thighs, and he’s forgone any bottoms. His bare legs are covered only up to his shins, where he’s put on thick wool black socks, held up with small sock garters around his calf muscles. 

“That’s a look,” Changkyun says. 

“I know,” Jaehwan replies, sipping a red cup of what must be cheap red wine, because his lips and tongue are stained a deep maroon. 

“Now me,” Changkyun urges, but Jaehwan walks over to bug Wonshik instead. “Will someone please tell me how hot I look?”

“You look hot,” comes Kihyun’s voice from the stairwell. “So whiny, aren’t you?”

Changkyun spins on his heels, blinking in absolute awe as Kihyun stands there on the bottom step in an unbuttoned navy suit jacket, his chest bare and smooth and pale. His legs are encased in tight navy dress pants that squeeze over the thicker parts of his upper thighs. 

“Oh,” Changkyun blurts, “Golly.”

“Seems like most people went with a blend of CEO and Consenting Hoe,” Kihyun observes, eyes sliding up and down Changkyun’s frame. 

Changkyun has on a pair of tight black shorts that reach a good few inches above his knees, and a pair of heathered gray wool knee-high socks. He’d wanted to go fully shirtless, but Jooheon had seemed so thoroughly offended that Changkyun threw on a plain white button-down. And a pair of round glasses because everyone always says he looks cute in specs.

“Good,” Changkyun says, swallowing the lust down like an uncomfortably thick pill. “You look good. Too. In addition. To me.”

“Looks like you stole my socks,” Kihyun says, stepping closer, and Changkyun can smell the Nip on the collar of his jacket.

“You smoked,” Changkyun replies.

“Mm,” Kihyun says, sound coming slow and lazy from between his lips. “Feels nice.”

“Where’s Minhyuk?” 

Kihyun nods up the stairs. “In his bedroom.”

Changkyun rushes over to Jooheon, slings his arm to loop around Jooheon’s, and he drags him up the steps. “Come with me. I want to smoke, but I don’t wanna be alone.”

“Why? I don’t wanna be around your smelly asses on Nip,” Jooheon huffs, but he follows regardless. He knows how Changkyun gets on Nip, and he knows not to question the logic.

Changkyun opens Minhyuk’s door, and he’s on his bed, blowing smoke between his lips into Hyunwoo’s open mouth. Jooheon gasps, shutting the door behind them, startling Minhyuk’s eyes open. He turns to the door, movements slow and easy, and his lips spread into a grin.

“My sweet-smelling Honey bee,” Minhyuk coos, beckoning them closer. 

“What about me?” Changkyun snips.

“And Changkyun,” Minhyuk says, smirking. 

Changkyun shoves at Minhyuk, and he collapses back onto his mattress, hoisting his joint up into the air. 

“Take it then.”

Changkyun snags it from Minhyuk’s long, thin fingers and brings it to his lips, taking a long pull. It makes him cough, the rough heat searing at the back of his already-raw throat, but when it settles low in his belly it feels right. He sighs up to the ceiling, smoke puffing out up toward the ceiling fan. Changkyun watches the tan blades swing around for a moment before taking another long pull. 

“Slow down, lil pup,” Hyunwoo says, lifting up heavily from the bed and making Changkyun pass the Nip to Jooheon. 

Jooheon looks down at it burning slowly between his fingers, and then he looks over at Minhyuk with his flushed cheeks and slow, gentle movements. He brings the end to his lips and draws in a breath. 

And then chokes on smoke. Changkyun grabs the joint from him frantically, afraid he’ll burn his fingers as it continues singing down the paper.

Minhyuk leaps from the bed, backing Jooheon up against the wall, making him tip his head up to the ceiling as the smoke burns out from his lips with each wheezing cough. Minhyuk keeps one hand on Jooheon’s chest, the other cupping Jooheon’s soft dimpled cheek. “Okay?”

Jooheon nods, eyes glassy, and Changkyun squeals (internally, he thinks?). 

“Want to try again?” Minhyuk asks.

Jooheon nods, reaching out for Changkyun to pass the Nip back, and Changkyun watches as Minhyuk takes it instead and holds it up close to Jooheon’s parted lips. Jooheon wraps his precious kitten lips around it, close to Minhyuk’s fingers, and takes another small inhale. 

This time he coughs again but seems pleased with himself. Minhyuk hands the Nip back to Changkyun, who takes another quick draw. 

“How did you get Kihyun to smoke, Minnie?”

Minhyuk can’t look away from the way Jooheon’s dimples seem suddenly endlessly deep in his plush cheeks. Eventually the question sinks in and he shrugs. “Dunno. He asked.”

“He asked?”

“Said he was on edge for some reason,” Minhyuk replies, stepping back and away from Jooheon, who actually keens when the heat of Minhyuk’s body disappears. Minhyuk’s gaze darkens, and Changkyun wonders once again what happened when Minhyuk took Jooheon to the infirmary that one time. Jooheon said  _ nothing _ but there’s been this weird tension between them ever since.

Hyunwoo comes up behind Changkyun, hand at the small of his back, and he leans down to whisper, “Let’s head back to the party, yeah?”

The weight of Hyunwoo’s hand makes Changkyun shudder and press back against him, but Hyunwoo just laughs and escorts him back out toward the stairwell.

“Do you think I put Kihyun on edge?” 

“You put a lot of people on edge, baby,” Hyunwoo says, brushing Changkyun’s hair back from his face. “In a good way.” He slaps Changkyun’s ass before passing him and jogging down the steps back into the basement. 

“What does that  _ meaaaaaan _ ,” Changkyun whimpers, trailing after him by scent, his eyelids feeling droopy and heavy. 

From the base of the stairwell, Changkyun watches as Kihyun bends Hoseok over one of the stage desks, leaning in close to Hoseok and biting at the back of his throat. Hoseok grips the other end of the desk, and people seem to be just letting it happen. 

Something primal and electric surges up in Changkyun’s body as Kihyun grips Hoseok by the back of his neck and shoves his face down against the lacquered plastic desk so he can grind his hips against Hoseok’s ass. Changkyun’s body screams  _ alpha alpha alpha  _ as he watches, even knowing Kihyun is a beta and Hoseok is the alpha in this odd display. 

Maybe that’s why everyone is watching. Mu Chi Alphas and Omegas have always been a little...different. That’s why people pledge for them. So they aren’t sorted and categorized and made to perform.

Hakyeon sips a red cup of wine as he watches, his back to Taekwoon’s chest. “This is why they should legalize Nip,” Hakyeon states. “This shit could be everywhere. So hot.”

Jaehwan raises his cup in a cheers, but doesn’t clink their cups. “Here, here.”

Kihyun lifts his head, and he finds Changkyun at the base of the steps immediately. He pushes away from Hoseok and leaves him gasping and writhing against the desk, as he strides purposefully over to Changkyun. 

“You smell so good,” he says, eyes red-rimmed and smoked-out. He leans in, brushing his lips over Changkyun’s pulse point, and Changkyun’s knees nearly give out beneath him. 

“Ki.”

Kihyun turns back to Hyungwon, standing by the DJ booth. “Music, please.”

Hyungwon looks affronted at being ordered to do anything, but he complies, putting on something thumping and smooth. Everyone who had been watching Kihyun crowd Hoseok up against the desk finds their way in toward the bare floor in front of the DJ setup. 

Changkyun feels like he’s in a trance as Kihyun leads him backward and then spins him around so his back is pressed to Kihyun’s front. 

“C’mon, Kkukkungie,” Kihyun breathes hot and low against the shell of Changkyun’s ear. “Make up for that time you pretended to strangle me during our duet dance performance.”

Changkyun’s limbs feel like they’re empty, so light, free of blood (all of it rushing other, more urgent places), and he coils his arms around the back of Kihyun’s neck, head falling back against Kihyun’s shoulder as he moves to the music.

Changkyun has never been the best dancer. Choreography takes him a while if he ever needs to learn it, but he knows how to feel. He’s always known how to let himself feel. 

So, pressing himself back against the line of Kihyun’s body (the line that matches so pitch-perfectly to his own), Changkyun feels.

Kihyun’s hand snakes across Changkyun’s stomach, coming to rest on his hip as he helps Changkyun roll his body back so the soft part of his ass grazes where Kihyun is clearly getting hard in his slacks.

“You’re so gorgeous, Kyunnie, always so fucking gorgeous,” Kihyun says, and his scent is almost overwhelming as he leans in to brush his lips over Changkyun’s scent gland again. Changkyun wants him to just bite down. Just claim him here in front of everyone, but he also knows he’s pretty fucking high on this Nip. 

“You’ve never told me that before,” Changkyun gasps, letting Kihyun roll him through the song transition as the beat changes until their hips are in sync again. 

“Sure I have. Don’t you remember?”

“Maybe you dreamed it,” Changkyun retorts, racking his brain for any such memory. Changkyun knows everything about Kihyun, about he and Kihyun. 

He’s still surprised, though, when Kihyun simply says, “Maybe I did.”

Changkyun closes his eyes, and he can almost feel pebbles under his bare feet, can hear the way the creek water streams between stepping stones. He feels Kihyun’s fingers on his chin, turning his head around, and their lips are so close, so close that Changkyun’s gut catches fire and sends smoke billowing up into his chest. He wants to share the heat with Kihyun, share it between their parted lips, but then Taekwoon is grabbing Changkyun’s arm and wrenching him away. 

“We’re getting someone to take you home, Changkyun” Taekwoon says.

Changkyun looks around, and everyone is staring at them, and Kihyun is looking lost as he starts sobering up, probably feeling that he’s likely damp from where Changkyun had rutted back against his cock.

“We told you,” Hyunwoo says gently, touching Changkyun’s arm lightly as he begins shaking. He can’t look away from the terrified look on Kihyun’s face, the way he stares down at his own palms and fingers like they aren’t his own. 

But, to Changkyun, the Kihyun that held him tight to his chest, that gripped his chin between pretty, pale fingers -- that’s the Kihyun he’s always known. The one that smells like damp, hot summer air and deep, familiar woods with trees you can name by heart.

“Told me what? We were fine,” Changkyun hisses, yanking his arm free from Hyunwoo’s touch.

“Fine? Changkyun, Kihyun looks so fucked up right now,” Taekwoon says, raising his voice alarmingly (for Taekwoon) at the same time Hyungwon cuts the music. Taekwoon sighs and rubs at his face in frustration. “Just go home and sleep, okay?”

“I don’t want to. I want Kihyun.”

Kihyun has backed up to put his spine flat against one of the far walls, as far from Changkyun as possible, and Changkyun feels sick. Sick in the way of forgetting a birthday, sick in the way of getting back an exam you didn’t study for, sick in the way of realizing he’s once again read everything so wrong and ruined it again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, willing his body to calm down, willing his scent to dissipate so he isn’t standing there in the middle of the party all ashamed and aroused. 

“It’s okay,” Kihyun says, voice small as Minhyuk checks his eyes for residual high, checks his stability, and gives Hoseok a small ‘okay’ sign with his thumb and forefinger. “It isn’t your fault.”

“Take me home, please,” Changkyun whimpers, grabbing the front of Hyunwoo’s shirt. 

Jooheon comes up and shakes his head. “I’ll take him. Kyunnie, c’mere. Let’s go home, yeah?”

Changkyun’s throat produces a sound he’s only ever heard from Omegas in severe distress, and it just feeds into his shame. Kihyun must’ve made some effort to move because Hakyeon and Minhyuk are holding him still as he struggles in their grip. 

He wants to come.

He wants.

No.

Stop seeing things.Stop... _ smelling _ things.

Changkyun tangles his fingers with Jooheon’s as Hyungwon comes up on his other side and grabs his other hand. “I love you,” Changkyun sniffles. He’s never been like this. That sad Omega who cries at parties. Changkyun is the fun one. The party brat. He’s seen rejected Omegas crying at parties and laughed. No one can reject you when you belong to everyone.

Then they get home, Hyungwon helps Jooheon throw their mattresses onto the floor to build a nest, and Changkyun curls up between two bodies and calms his mind with the scent of pack. 

He feels pathetic as his Omega mewls these pitiful sounds all night, his body aching and restless, but Hyungwon and Jooheon just hold him close and let him be that Omega, just for a night. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. Hallo-weekend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this chapter was so fun. I hope you enjoy. Sorry this story's plot is just me going 'this would be hilarious' or 'why not?'  
> find me on twitter @likesatellitez

Halloween, growing up in a pack, had been nonexistent. Something to taunt betas about. Something to perhaps see for a split second in a single scene of a new film. 

But Halloween for betas. Halloween at Kihyun’s old college, had been  _ an event _ . A celebration. Bacchanalia. Chaos. There were more alcohol-poisoning hospitalizations during Hallo-weekend than any other weekend at his beta university. It was about excess. Sweets. Liquor. Sex. 

Kihyun remembers the first time he was dragged by his roommate to a party on the Thursday before Halloween. Halloween was on a Sunday that year, but Hallo-weekend stretched from Wednesday to Monday. People had costumes for every night. For every party. The costumes weren’t about anything other than showing off skin, since skin is all a beta has, as far as attraction can go. Skin--personality?--and confidence. 

Kihyun remembers being draped in a cheap silky vampire cape, teeth capped with two false little white fangs that stood out starkly against his actual coffee-stained teeth. Parties were just throngs of intoxicated bodies in costume, betas throwing themselves at one another in desperation, collapsing onto the slick cement floor and continuing to go at one another like they’d never get another chance. It was like Halloween weekend was about pretending their beta bodies were out of their own control, like alphas and omegas. Like Halloween ( _ something about the moon, maybe _ , someone had explained) could be their one time to pretend they could smell one another, the arousal, the temptation, the need. 

Kihyun found a nice beta girl at that party, the one he actually went to, and she smelled all wrong. Like thick floral soap and misted vanilla, her body dripping in sweat that just smelled like sweat. And not like Changkyun at all. 

Not like sun-soaked fruit ripening on a windowsill. Not like fresh mint picked straight from the earth, held under his nose, scent carried by warm autumn breezes. 

She kissed like she wanted Kihyun to consume her, and Kihyun kissed back like they were two betas in a movie, two betas who didn’t care that they’d never lay bare and comfortable and safe in a nest of familiar bodies. Two betas who fell in love over slightly burnt Starbucks coffee and got to know one another without the meddling chemicals surging through their bodies. Two betas who found one another attractive on a purely aesthetic level. She had nice hands, small and delicate and pale, and she had short, thick thighs wrapped in leather shorts, and Kihyun thought she was pretty. Pretty, soft-lipped, and warm. 

But when she tugged at the front tie of his cape and asked  _ your place or mine? _ , Kihyun just shook his head and left. He didn’t want it. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. Natural in the sense of fate. Natural in the sense that the moon and stars and all the ruling bodies pulled at their hormones and body chemistry the same way they pull at the tides, the plants in the ground, and the other creatures they live among. 

Kihyun doesn’t want to force his body to get comfortable with another cold, scentless body. He wants to be thrown together by the stars. He wants what he felt all those summers ago, when he and Changkyun locked eyes over a cutting board full of poorly-chopped garden vegetables. When Kihyun tucked his nose against the deeply tanned column of Changkyun’s throat and swore he tasted fresh night air on his tongue, swore he felt something deep and primal inside his gut wake up and growl possessively into the empty hollow places in his body. 

Kihyun was seventeen the first time his parents sat him down and said  _ we think it might be best if we looked at some beta universities _ . 

He was seventeen when he stopped responding to Changkyun’s letters. When he wrote to Hoseok and said  _ don’t tell him, please don’t tell him _ because the thought of Changkyun picking up his letter and realizing he’s put his utter and complete faith in a useless, scentless beta made Kihyun’s whole body shiver with broken sobs. 

It wasn’t fair. Kihyun had been the most alpha teen at camp, though no one had presented as anything yet. Everyone was prepared to follow him they way they would an alpha. He was supposed to have everything. He’d worked so hard, made himself as prudent and prepared and confident and respectable as possible. 

But it didn’t matter. 

His rut just. Never came. 

Well, not really.

Kihyun was twenty when Hoseok wrote to say Changkyun had presented finally. He was late, for an omega. Eighteen. His final year of high school. Hoseok’s letter was long, like he was hiding something between the lines of every paragraph. It wasn’t until the last couple sentences when he finally admitted  _ I was there. He asked for my help. I’m sorry, Ki. He wanted you there too, I promise.  _

Kihyun doesn’t remember what happened to the letter. Just that his body had sunk rapidly into a fever unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. That his skin burned, and his muscles railed against the walls of his body, like they couldn’t stand to be contained. It felt a bit like what he’d heard shift sickness feels like--that feeling like your body is all wrong, your skin is too tight, too hot, too  _ human _ . He felt simultaneously angry, miserable, and violently ill. 

He spent three days hovering between asleep and awake, body wracked with painful tremblings and aches, and for a split second he wondered if maybe he was finally presenting. 

But no one treated him any differently after. No one declared their surprise at his sudden alpha scent. Nothing changed. 

Except Kihyun dreamed of Changkyun more. And sometimes, inexplicably, he’d wake up in the middle of the night, gasping, hard, and crying at the same time. 

 

Halloween here at a mixed gendered school is different. There’s still that element of expected drunken chaos, but there’s much less desperation. Much less pulsing, obvious thirst. Well, the thirst is obvious, but it isn’t nearly as forced. 

The school decides the theme is to dress as famous pop culture icons. Kihyun finds a Harry Potter costume online and orders it because Hoseok tells him he looks cute in glasses. 

Kihyun has taken to sneaking into Hoseok’s room sometimes. The Mu Chi Alphas have all been perfectly welcoming, but Kihyun’s single room in the attic of the fraternity house smells stale and unfamiliar, and sometimes it gets so musky and hot that Kihyun can’t sleep at all. 

So he pads quietly down the creaky stairs and finds Hoseok by the sound of soft music that he always keeps playing as he sleeps. He’s never been able to sleep in the quiet, even when they were kids. 

Hoseok’s door opens, and Kihyun can see him immediately rolling over to peer in the doorway. Hyunwoo doesn’t wake at all. He sleeps like the dead. Like a very cozy-looking dead man.

Hoseok, though, has always been more alert. He shifts over so his back is against the wall behind his bed and folds the blankets over so Kihyun can climb in. 

“You good?”

Kihyun shrugs in the dark and folds himself up as small as possible against Hoseok’s much larger frame. “Doesn’t feel right, sleeping up there by myself when you all share.”

Hoseok doesn’t reply the way Kihyun would expect. You know, the whole  _ you’re not an alpha, so it would be awkward _ thing. Instead, he just yawns, tugs Kihyun against his thick, broad chest and holds him tightly. “I’m sure Hakyeon would let you pull your mattress into our room.”

“That would be way too many bodies in this tiny space, Seok,” Kihyun laughs, nuzzling into Hoseok’s pillow and smelling his still shower-wet hair and deep woodsy scent. “I’m sure Hyunwoo would be super annoyed.”

“Have you met Hyunwoo?” Hoseok laughs, breath warm and gentle against the back of Kihyun’s neck. 

“A terrifying beast.”

“A literal teddy bear.”

“No, that’s you.”

“I’m sorry about the way I was at the last party,” Kihyun whispers.

“It wasn’t you. It was the nip. I get it, man.”

“What if it was me, though?”

“I didn’t hate it,” Hoseok admits, laughing gruffly with his sleep-rough voice. 

“Me rutting against you like a newly-presented pup?” Kihyun groans, covering his face, even though he isn’t even facing Hoseok. Just at the sheer memory.

“We’ll always be pack, Ki. If you need something, you know you can always ask me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Seok. But aren’t you and Changkyun…?”

“Ki, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Changkyun doesn’t exactly swoon over me that way. We’re pack. We’ve always been pack, and you know that. It’s different. Like I said, he has needs, and I do too, and when we can, we help each other. It isn’t like that.”

“I can’t help anyone like that.”

“Why? Because you don’t knot? He isn’t a hentai novel character, Kihyun. He’s not blindly groping for knots and crying incoherently until he’s bred.”

Kihyun swallows thickly.

“It’s about touch. And you know that. You’ve just been away from pack people so long you forgot. And that’s fine. No one will force you into anything. But sometimes he just wants to be held by someone familiar. It’s a basic need even betas have, as I’m sure you know.”

Kihyun thinks of the nights he woke up trembling and sweating and aching for something solid and comforting. 

“Yeah. But what do I do? How do I get that back?”

“Even betas have instinct, Kihyun. It isn’t as primal, but it’s there. Listen to your body. It tells you when you need to drink water, when you need to sleep after endless hours of studying. It’ll tell you when you need other things too, if you listen well enough.”

Kihyun flips around and presses into the strong barrel of Hoseok’s chest. “You got so wise while I was away, getting even dumber.”

“I presented really early, so I had to learn fast. I didn’t have many people around to teach me. It was a learning curve.”

“Did you find a costume yet?” 

“Yeah. Minhyuk and I went to the mall off campus. Minhyuk heard you were going as Harry, so he got a Ron costume. Be prepared for him to follow you around with poorly accented British witticisms.”

Kihyun sighs, and it quickly shifts into a yawn. “Great.”

“He’s asked about our pack, you know.”

“And? You want a pack of three alphas and one omega?”

“Changkyun is actively recruiting his omega friends.”

“He wouldn’t prefer being the only spoiled omega in a pack of hot alphas?”

“You think we’re hot, huh?”

“Oh shut up, you Baywatch-ass motherfucker, you know you’re hot. It’s why you’re always fuckin’ shirtless.”

Hoseok leans in and bites at the shell of Kihyun’s ear. “Nice of you to finally admit, though. But, no, Changkyun is definitely an omega’s omega. He needs that other presence. Those calming pheromones. Otherwise he’d be...a lot.”

“He’s always been  _ a lot _ .”

“You weren’t even there for the worst of it.”

Kihyun bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. “Sorry.”

Hoseok lightly slaps the top of his head. “Hey, don’t apologize. You were dealing with your own shit. We were fine. Would have loved to have you with us, but I understand, Ki. Really, I do.”

“But he doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t understand. Losing you was more than losing an alpha, Ki. You were central to who he’d built himself to be.”

“And now I can’t be.”

“Who says?”

“Um, the world at large?”

“Again, why? Because your dick doesn’t knot? Because you can’t breed him? He loved you before you both were anything at all. He didn’t care about what your dick did when aroused.”

“Well, that’s not necessarily true.”

“I’ve never seen anyone click the way you two clicked back then. Give him a chance, okay? For me?”

“For you, fine.”

“And I meant it about the other thing.”

“What other thing?”

“If you ever have needs. You look like a repressed weasel 90% of the time.”

“Wow, thanks. I call you hot, and you call me a repressed weasel.”

Hoseok nips at the skin of Kihyun’s throat, and Kihyun’s hips kick. “See? Listen to your body, Ki. Don’t punish it anymore.”

“I’m not a  _ virgin _ , Hoseok.”

“I’m aware. I remember that letter.  _ Hoseok, is she supposed to cry _ ?”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Changkyun likes to cry.”

Kihyun’s hips kick again, and Hoseok laughs so hard that Hyunwoo finally rolls over and groans, “If you don’t either get fucking or get to sleep in the next thirty seconds, I’m sending you both to the attic.”

“We woke Daddy,” Hoseok teases, giggling. 

“Please don’t call him Daddy in front of me,” Kihyun whimpers, eyelids finally feeling heavy enough for sleep.

“Why? You wanna be Daddy? I’m sure Changkyun would--”

“ _ Attic _ ,” Hyunwoo grumbles, and Hoseok promptly shuts up and Kihyun finally falls asleep. 

 

“What exactly are you supposed to be?” Kihyun asks, gaping at Hoseok as he adjusts his leotard in the mirror. 

“I’m Regina George.”

Kihyun throws his scarf at Hoseok’s nearly entirely exposed ass, covered only by sheer black tights and two small slivers of black fabric at the base of his leotard. “This is your famous pop culture icon?”

“Yepp. Everyone says I’m like a rabbit anyhow. Might as well make it sexy.”

“This is a beta woman’s costume.”

“And it fits me just perfectly, thanks,” Hoseok snips, adjusting the furry tops of his white boots, bending over so his ass is even more pert and exposed. Kihyun covers his entire face to make the sight disappear, but his body still reacts from the afterimage behind his eyelids. 

“Are you guys ready?” Hyunwoo calls, peering into the bathroom in his Winnie the Pooh kigurumi. 

“Aren’t you hot in that?”

“He sure is,” Hoseok coos, tugging Hyunwoo into the bathroom to plant a big smooch on his cheek. “Can you zip me?”

Hyunwoo grabs the zipper at the base of Hoseok’s spine and tugs it up, securing the leotard in place over all of his thick muscles. 

“I thought you were gonna be Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh,” Hyunwoo pouts.

“Beta Halloween is about sex and excess,” Hoseok declares, drawing eyeliner onto his waterline in the mirror. “Right, Ki?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it’s supposed to be for kids. Candy and Trick-or-Treating.”

“Trick or what?”

“You know, going to someone’s house and saying ‘trick-or-treat’, and they give you candy.”

“What does the saying mean?” Hyunwoo asks, placing the rabbit-ear headband onto Hoseok’s head and playing with the furry tips as he watches Hoseok finish his makeup. 

“I think it used to be like a challenge to get the candy. Like you do a trick and they give you a treat?”

“Oh, I like that. That sounds fun,” Hoseok says, turning around and squinting at Kihyun. “Don’t tell Changkyun about that, though. Sounds like something his praise-hungry sub ass would latch onto hard.”

“Wha...what do you mean?”

Hoseok just smirks.

Hyunwoo, though, not really reading the room, declares, “It means Changkyun gets super horny when he has to earn a reward.”

“Oh,” Kihyun replies dumbly. 

“Just let that one stew in the ole noggin a little, huh?” Hoseok teases, pushing Kihyun’s fake Harry Potter glasses up the bridge of his nose until the plastic lenses are brushing his eyelashes. 

“I hate you.”

“‘ello ‘arry!” Minhyuk cries, bursting into the bathroom in Ron Weasley’s homemade sweater, his hair dyed bright orange. 

“Ron doesn’t talk like that,” Kihyun groans. 

“I only read the books. Didn’t see the movies. In my head, he talks like this,” Minhyuk retorts, shaking a hand through his hair to make it even more wild and unkempt. “Do I look like a poor British wizard?”

“You look like an idiot,” Kihyun sighs.

“Perfect!” Minhyuk slings his arm around Kihyun’s shoulders, the itchy wool of his sweater scratching against the back of Kihyun’s neck. “I’m your idiot tonight, baby.”

“Can we not do this at the actual party, though?” Kihyun grumbles, letting Minhyuk lead him down the stairs to the fraternity living room, with its rapidly deteriorating old leather sectional sofa and haphazardly built ping pong table with sticky rings of old beer lining the green top. 

“Oh, don’t worry, Potter. I heard a rumor my sweet honey bee is going as a vampire, so I’ll be all up ons and nowhere near your sorry nerd ass,” Minhyuk replies, patting the top of Kihyun’s dark hair with a flat palm, like he’s a well-trained pup. 

“ _ Your _ sweet honey bee? Last I remember, Jooheon was at least 15% terrified of you.”

Minhyuk’s lips twitch up at one corner into a prideful smirk. “The other 75% is pure, unbridled lust, my friend.”

Kihyun feels his brain melting into grey matter goo and dripping out between his ears. “You do know that 15 plus 75 doesn’t equal 100, right?”

“Huh?” Minhyuk asks, turning around from where he’s begun inspecting his freckles in the living room mirror. “I dunno, man. All I know is that I’ve never felt the need to put my hands on anything and just  _ squeeze _ like when I look at that omega’s hips.”

“He’s Changkyun’s best friend.”

“Yeah, and?”

“And you’ve fucked him, haven’t you? Changkyun?”

“Not entirely,” Minhyuk says, peering through the windows as the bus pulls up in front of the house and honks. “I keep forgetting you grew up in a pack, considering you act like such a prude little beta.”

Kihyun grumbles under his breath, “I do not.”

“Yeah, I touched Changkyun’s dick. Big whoop? We’re gonna be pack. You think your pack members growing up were  _ monogamous _ ? What do you think they did at Moon festivals? Drink cider and have polite conversation?”

Kihyun winces. “But Jooheon isn’t from a pack. He might not get it.”

“He will,” Minhyuk says, wrenching the front door open and barking, “BUS IS HERE!” 

“How do you know?”

Minhyuk sighs and pats Kihyun’s butt as he passes out the front door toward the bus idling on the street. “Just instinct, Ki. Pure instinct.”

 

Minhyuk’s instinct was right about one thing. When the bus pulls up at the school athletic center, Mu Chi Omegas are just walking in. And Jooheon is most certainly a vampire. A very, very sparkly vampire. 

His soft brown hair is coiffed up with what must be some very strong gel, and he’s wearing a leather jacket over absolutely nothing but golden body glitter. He’s got his arms crossed over his middle, clearly somewhat uncomfortable, but Changkyun is slinging an arm around his waist and nuzzling in to touch his lips to Jooheon’s scent gland. 

Changkyun is wearing a plaid flannel under a thick tan Carhartt jacket, legs encased by light-wash jeans that flare just slightly at his ankles. And a wig.

A big, messy brown wig. The hair spills into his face in the breeze, and he doesn’t make any move to brush it away, his arms occupied around Jooheon’s waist. If anything, the wig only serves to make Changkyun’s already very prominent nose even more prominent, but Kihyun finds that aesthetic enhancement… somehow precious.

Goddess, he’s always been whipped for this freak. 

Changkyun lifts his head from Jooheon’s throat, and, as if sensing Kihyun’s arrival, whips his head around to look him dead in the eyes. 

He seems afraid. Anxious. Kihyun doesn’t blame him. The last time they saw one another wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. 

Kihyun lifts a tentative hand and waves. Progress, Kihyun. Progress. Slow and steady.

Changkyun tucks a few stray strands of thick dark hair back behind his ear and grins. 

Yepp, he’s whipped all right.

Minhyuk and Hoseok drag Kihyun toward the doors, where Hyungwon (in a lime green turtle kigurumi), Jooheon, and Changkyun are waiting for Taekwoon to finish headcount. 

“Nice sparkles,” Minhyuk says, eyeing Jooheon’s glitter-coated throat where the beaming lights outside the gymnasium catch it. 

Jooheon presses tighter to Changkyun’s side. “Thanks,” he mutters, and there’s a slight lisp to his speech from the fake fangs as he looks at Minhyuk through sweetly curled lashes. 

Minhyuk touches Jooheon’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, and Jooheon obediently parts his lips to expose his teeth. “I thought  _ Twilight _ vampires don’t have fangs.”

“They don’t, but we were worried people would think he’s just a weird go-go dancer without them,” Changkyun says, laughing behind his hand (that’s been swallowed by a jacket sleeve like a limp paw). 

“I like them,” Minhyuk says, touching the tip of his finger to the end of one of the glued-on teeth.

Jooheon flushes, and Kihyun can’t smell him, but he notices as everyone around them glances over at what must be a very sudden spike in pheromones. Changkyun is still giggling behind his flapping sleeves when Hakyeon and Taekwoon appear behind everyone to usher them inside. 

The entire fraternity system gathers for Halloween. Kihyun finds he recognizes a few people from his classes--another beta named Chanyeol who will sometimes find him in the library to see if he wants to get coffee and chat, like he knows what Kihyun is going through, like he wants an excuse to vent. Which Kihyun understands. 

He just never goes.

Nothing against Chanyeol. He’s nice and smells clean (unlike a lot of betas that overcompensate with cologne or perfume), and he doesn’t make Kihyun feel weird about being more than several inches shorter than him. 

The gym is pretty packed already, hot, the air thick and humid, and it’s decked out in black and orange streamers and balloons, like the party of a beta middle school dance. There are little tables at the back, with bowls of candy in the center, a lot of them already mostly empty save for some assholes who just left the empty wrappers. Along the wall, there’s a long buffet table so that drunk students always have access to food. Kihyun wishes beta schools thought of these things. Maybe there’d be less alcohol poisoning.

Though maybe the alcohol poisoning is just another part of trying to feel out of control.

There’s no DJ, but there is music blaring from the speaker system overhead, where the indoor track circles above on the second floor. It fills the room with thumping noise, something danceable but probably remixed. A mix of songs smashed together to make a more frantic beat. 

Changkyun pops up behind Kihyun with a red cup of chilled white wine, and his cheeks are already flush with pink. “Are you guys entering the costume contest?”

Kihyun looks over at Minhyuk. “Is that why you wanted a couple costume?”

“First of all, team Drarry. Rarry is awful. Who the fuck would date Ron?”

Kihyun opens his mouth, quietly muttering, “Hermio--” 

Jooheon has started raising a hand, and he looks down at it in horror. 

Minhyuk blinks slowly and then laughs. “You want a drink before the contest? You two are entering, right?”

Jooheon nods, and Minhyuk tucks an arm under Jooheon’s to guide him over to the drink table. He winks over his shoulder at Kihyun. Kihyun heaves a sigh. 

“You look cu--you look nice in glasses,” Changkyun says, plucking strands of wig hair away from his lips that have obviously been tinted pink. There are two fake puncture wounds on his throat, which doesn’t fit his narrative and also stirs up something possessive and ugly in Kihyun’s gut. Changkyun must notice Kihyun’s eyes on his fake blood droplets, and he reaches up to touch the delicate skin beneath them. “Oh, yeah. I know it doesn’t happen like that, but otherwise I just look like a weird beta hipster girl.”

“It’s a look for sure,” Kihyun says, voice tight in his throat. 

“How’s pledging going?”

“Huh?” Kihyun tears his eyes away from Changkyun’s neck again, blinking like he’s standing in a pitch black room, fighting for sight. “Oh, uh, it’s fine. Everyone is really nice. Not scary at all. If anything, I’m concerned they’re going easy on me. You know, cause I’m not...alpha. Or whatever.”

“Hakyeon wouldn’t do that. He’s the most progressive alpha I know. If anything, I think the fraternity board gets pissed that he’s so lenient. There was a trans-alpha kid pledging last year, but he ended up transferring.”

“Huh,” Kihyun mutters, looking over at where Hakyeon and Wonshik are standing by the buffet table. Hakyeon is wearing a leopard print cardigan over a tight black dress. His wig is pulled up into curly pigtails, with a matching leopard print headband. He looks like the kind of girl Kihyun would jerk it to in middle school. Wonshik has hot pink booty shorts on, a kitten-ear headband, and a strange little omega housewife wig, curled up at the bottoms. He looks both uncomfortable and amused at his own predicament. “Yepp, definitely unlike any alphas I knew growing up.”

“Your pack was pretty hardcore,” Changkyun says, fiddling with his jacket zipper. “I know a lot of alphas nowadays who are like Hakyeon.”

“Yeah that’s...that’s good. I’m really glad. Hoseok too. And Hyunwoo. They’re good guys. For your, uh, your pack.”

Changkyun looks up from the zipper, pinched between his little tan fingers, and his brows pull together. “My pack?” He’s about to say something else, probably rip into Kihyun a little, but then there’s a voice on stage calling for all the costume contest entries. 

“Later,” Kihyun says, trying to mollify Changkyun, who is storming toward the stage. “Later, okay?”

Changkyun doesn’t respond, just grabs Jooheon from Minhyuk and drags him up to the stage with him. Minhyuk looks at Kihyun like  _ what did you do _ and then says aloud, “What did you do?”

Kihyun shrugs and follows Minhyuk up after them.

He sees now that not only are Hakyeon and Wonshik dressed absurdly like early 2000’s girl-group pop celebrities, but Jaehwan, Hongbin, and Sanghyuk are as well. Taekwoon is announcing the contest, standing on one leg with the other lifted in a plaster cast. Kihyun wonders if he’s faking to avoid the embarrassment. 

Hakyeon, though, is truly preening under the attention of the crowd. And Taekwoon keeps shooting glances at the short hem of his dress, where the black fabric meets his sheer tights. 

Hyunwoo and Hoseok are standing beside them. 

“You can’t be a couple costume. You’re from different universes,” Minhyuk hisses at them.

Hoseok shrugs. “There’s a Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh.”

“You’re  _ Regina George _ .”

“Don’t try to define me,” Hoseok spits back, clearly a bit tipsy as he latches tightly to Hyunwoo’s fleecey pajama arm. 

“There’s no prize for winning,” Taekwoon mumbles into the microphone, and Kihyun watches as Wonshik removes his kitty headband and places it on Taekwoon’s head instead. Taekwoon’s eyelids flutter in pure unadulterated rage, but he continues, “So let’s just get this over with. Please present your costumes.”

Hoseok leaps up into Hyunwoo’s arms and makes Hyunwoo carry him to the microphone at center stage. “We’re cute animals from a book.”

“Why are you in lingerie?” someone cries from the crowd.

Hoseok cries, “BECAUSE I CAN.”

Hyunwoo leans down to the microphone and softly says, “Oh,  _ bother _ .”

The crowd erupts in laughter and applause. Hyunwoo carts Hoseok back to their spot in line and doesn’t put him down.

Minhyuk guides Kihyun over to the mic. “‘Ello everyone! Eets me, Ron! And ‘Arry!”

“Ron doesn’t talk like that!” someone in the audience heckles.

Kihyun leans in to the microphone, lips brushing the metal as he hisses quietly, “ _ Avada Kedavra. _ ”

Minhyuk shrieks and quickly covers Kihyun’s mouth. “Arry, no!”

“Make out!” someone else cries.

Kihyun leans in again. “ _ Avada ke _ \--”

Minhyuk grabs Kihyun by the cheeks and yanks him in for a kiss. Kihyun’s brain explodes behind his eyelids. The room screeches. Minhyuk slides his tongue over Kihyun’s bottom lip, and Kihyun realizes how truly repressed he must be, because he kisses back.

Minhyuk releases him with a wet pop and a pat on the back. “Maybe Rarry isn’t so bad.”

Kihyun turns to walk back to their spot, still in a daze, when he notices Changkyun staring at him. Staring like a twelve-year-old who left the television on past midnight and discovered the world of late-night programming. Staring like that same twelve-year-old who realized how little he truly knew about himself and the universe because of it.

Jooheon tugs Changkyun over to the microphone, Changkyun trailing after him with heavy feet. “Uh, we’re Bella and Edward,” Jooheon explains. “I’m a vampire. She’s, uh, she’s just a normal human girl. But we’re in love.”

“Now you guys make out!”

Changkyun fists his hands into Jooheon’s gelled-up hair and  _ yanks _ him down into a kiss so filthy that Kihyun shifts in place, feeling like he shouldn’t be watching. Jooheon splutters at first, but allows Changkyun to lead for a few moments of obscene lip crashing.

“This is the best Halloween party in school history,” Minhyuk murmurs, mesmerised. 

“What is even fucking happening.”

Taekwoon is about to step in to stop them, when Changkyun pulls away and turns abruptly toward Kihyun. He stamps his way across the stage, yanks his dollar-store wig from his head, and comes to stand in front of Kihyun with matted-down hair and a thick layer of stage makeup. “It isn’t  _ my _ pack,  _ stupid _ ,” Changkyun declares, fisting the front of Kihyun’s robes. “It’s  _ our _ pack.”

And he kisses him.

The crowd loses its mind.

Kihyun does too.

Changkyun tastes so familiar that tears spring to his eyes. He feels like there’s a cork lodged somewhere in his gut that comes un-stoppered. Everything rises up and busts out into his blood, into his veins, into his soul. He grabs Changkyun under the thighs and hoists him up into his arms, and Changkyun responds by winding his legs tight around Kihyun’s hips, his arms around Kihyun’s neck, and he whines against Kihyun’s lips. 

Taekwoon sighs into the microphone, causing a blasting of screeching feedback noise. It should be enough to make Changkyun stop kissing Kihyun, but it isn’t. 

“I’m giving the award to Hakyeon. Don’t ask questions,” Taekwoon says, pulling a crumpled certificate from his back pocket. “Someone please get Bella Swan and Harry Potter to stop going at it.”

A canon of confetti is shot on stage, right in Taekwoon’s face. Taekwoon grabs the microphone and shrieks, “ _ AVADA KEDAVRA. EVERYONE. ALL OF YOU. JUST DIE _ .”

Changkyun pulls away from Kihyun, presses their foreheads together, his lips swollen and so very pink. “So...Pack?”

Kihyun pants against Changkyun’s lips, feeling like he’ll never catch his breath again. “Yeah, okay. Yeah. Pack.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	6. Call of Booty: Modern Whorefare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: this chapter is kinda short bc i've been super sick and everything has been hectic and weird but i wanted to get this out  
> please leave comments bc they sustain this weak mortal body of mine better than any food or drink  
> i love you all

“I’m not-- _hngh_ \--sure how exactly this is supposed to ‘acclimate’ me to pack life, Changky _unhh_ ,” Kihyun blurts out, a thin, veiny hand reaching down to tangle into Changkyun’s hair, gripping tight.

“Shh, you’re still on voice,” Changkyun says, sloppily pulling his mouth away from Kihyun’s cock with an obscene slurp. They’re in Kihyun’s attic room, Kihyun perched on the edge of his twin-sized bed, Xbox remote clutched with one hand, headset microphone settled against his lips. “Don’t ruin the game.”

“Hoseok says he already knows you’re here,” Kihyun says, returning his other hand to the remote and entering back into the game after respawning. His thumbs are small and delicate and clean, and Changkyun wants one of them in his mouth, but he’s got to wait. “Minhyuk says he can hear your knees on the floorboards.”

Changkyun ignores him, finally face-to-shaft with his favorite cock in the whole wide world. He’s never seen it so close up. Never _experienced_ it. Felt the weight of it, warm and soft skin hardening on his tongue. He never thought he’d get this opportunity. He flicks his tongue up the underside, the head, just gets it all messy and wet, and Kihyun has practically stopped breathing. The skin is so smooth, both soft and impossibly hard in his hand.

Changkyun pulls off to admonish: “The purpose of this is for you to act like I’m not here, Ki. Not to asphyxiate yourself in an attempt not to jizz on my face. Please jizz on my face.”

Kihyun groans and frantically presses at buttons with those pretty thumbs, his avatar on the screen just leaping from building rooftop to rooftop, dodge-rolling and throwing punches at the air. Changkyun sighs and rests his cheek on Kihyun’s inner thigh, just watching his own fingertips graze the thick shaft of Kihyun’s dick. He sighs, tapping his thumb over the slit a few times, pulling it back to watch a line of precome trail after his skin.

“Thank you,” Changkyun breathes reverently.

“Why are you thanking me? For allowing you the pleasure of my privates in your mouth?”

“Fuck yeah,” Changkyun gasps out, unable to keep his mouth away any longer. He ducks down and gets to work, memorizing each twitch and flinch of Kihyun’s body beneath him. He’s so sensitive--so repressed--and every movement of Changkyun’s lips and tongue has his avatar onscreen taking a nosedive down onto cement and respawning again. “You’re really bad at this.”

“That’s because you’re really _good_ at _this_ ,” Kihyun whines out, trying like hell to get his fingers to cooperate, and it’s so _cute_. His forehead creases like he’s in pain and trying to focus. His chin wrinkles like a grandpa pondering his crossword puzzle. “It’s been a long time since anyone has touched my penis. And...and it’s you. You’re touching my penis. Goddess, Changkyun, your _mouth_ \--I KNOW I’M STILL ON VOICE, GUYS!”

Changkyun starts to giggle, gagging on Kihyun’s cock as he does so, and it makes Kihyun drop the remote completely and fist into Changkyun’s hair.

“Oh, oh Goddess, Kyun, I--I can’t-- _fuck_ \--”

Changkyun pulls off again, mouth slick with precome and spit, and he works his hand over Kihyun’s shaft over and over until he’s spilling hot and thick onto Changkyun’s nose and chin and lips and tongue.

Kihyun looks down at him, chest heaving with heavy pants, sweatpants pulled down to his knees, and he smirks. “I guess I failed.” The sheets of his bed, stripped with navy and silver, have pulled away from the mattress and bundled up under Kihyun’s thighs. There’s something sweet and innocent about it.

Changkyun licks at his lips and drops his chin to Kihyun’s knee, letting Kihyun pet his hair back away from his face. “You’re pack now. We can work on it.”

Through the tiny speaker of the gaming headset, Changkyun can hear Minhyuk sighing and saying, “Well now I’m hard.”

Changkyun sits up a bit, hands braced against Kihyun’s warm bare thighs, and he leans into the microphone, still tasting Kihyun on his tongue as he murmurs, “You’re welcome.”

Kihyun laughs and tosses the headset away onto the floor by the television, still showing his EPIC LOSS in big letters on the screen.

“C’mere,” he says, and Changkyun scrambles up to climb into his lap. Kihyun winds his arms around Changkyun’s waist to hold him in place. “I don’t...really know what I’m doing. And I still can’t--” He takes in a deep breath, still sounding like he’ll never get enough air. “I mean _we_. We still can’t be. Whatever we, uh, thought. Back then. But I want to be close to you. I feel better when I’m close to you. Hoseok too. Everyone. I feel so much better.”

Changkyun leans in to brush the tips of their noses together, feeling that same warm comfort enveloping him in Kihyun’s presence. Kihyun’s hands on his skin. “I know. We’ll get over it. I just want you around. And I want you to be honest with me. If I’m too much. I’m too much--”

“A lot.”

“Yeah. A lot. And I want to work on it. I want to keep you with us.” He shifts in Kihyun’s lap and touches his nose behind Kihyun’s ear. “You just smell so…”

“Kyun. Don’t,” Kihyun warns, hands gripping the back of Changkyun’s loose black sweater.

“But I can’t help it.” His nose grazes the line of Kihyun’s throat, his hips rocking down. “It’s so deep and _good_ ,” Changkyun purrs, lips brushing Kihyun’s skin.

Kihyun stands and dumps Changkyun off him and onto his butt on the floor, sprawled out on his back. “Red.”

“Did you just safeword me?”

Kihyun is shuddering slightly, like the edges of him are shivering. “Yes.”

“I just sucked your dick, but you’re safewording me just being near your neck? Shouldn’t it not matter?”

“You told me to tell you when you’re being too much. So now I am. I need to...can you please go home now?”

“That’s it?”

Kihyun runs his hands through his hair, turning to face away, his spine rigid. “I’ll see you at laser tag.”

“Ki--”

“Please.”

“Okay. Yeah. Sorry?”

Kihyun doesn’t answer, so Changkyun shuts the door behind him and heads back down the two flights of stairs to the main level of the Mu Chi Alpha house. Minhyuk is on the couch in his bright orange boxers and D.Va jersey, legs spread with one over the back of the cushions and the other dangling toward the floor.

“You smell like unresolved sexual tension,” Minhyuk says, shifting up against the arm of the couch to peer over the back of it at Changkyun as he shoves his feet back into his sneakers at the door. “How could that be? I heard Kihyun jizzing just minutes ago.”

Changkyun heaves a sigh. “That makes one of us.”

“You definitely also heard him. You were there.”

“I meant one of us _jizzing_ , numbnuts,” Changkyun hisses, shifting his still half-hard cock in his basketball shorts. “I hate this. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Like ever.”

“Probably too much, is all.”

“That much is obvious. Take two steps forward and one step back,” Changkyun whines, rubbing his hands over his face, smearing BB cream undoubtedly into obvious spirals of white and tan.

“Take two dicks in the mouth and one dick back,” Minhyuk replies, nodding sagely.

“I _wish_ I had two dicks in the mouth,” Changkyun grumbles, ignoring his untied laces and unlatching the front door. “See you for Call of Booty.”

“No you won’t,” Minhyuk says, smirking. “It’s called _stealth_.”

“Find me three vodka shots in, Minhyuk Lee, and then we’ll see about that stealth.”

“Sounds kinky.”

“There will be _no fucking_ at the Happy Time Fun Zone,” Hakyeon says, appearing from the kitchen with a large mug of steaming hot coffee. “And this is a sober event. We’re trying to promote alcohol-free fun.”

“How do you define _sex_ exactly?” Minhyuk questions with a raised hand.

Hakyeon just glares.

“P in B? P in V? V against V? H on V? P against P? P against H? P in M? P...alone in the bathroom?”

“I’ll put my F in your M if you so much as take your P out tonight Minhyuk Lee, I swear to the Goddess.”

“Not quite a deterrent, Pres,” Minhyuk says, flopping back onto the couch cushions and restarting his game. “See you tonight, BlueBalls McGee!”

Changkyun lets their door slam shut behind him, to the squealing of Hakyeon crying out: “THAT IS ANTIQUE RED CEDAR!”

 

“What did you do this time?” Jooheon asks, re-sewing a button onto his peacoat, already fully prepared for winter, which Changkyun is dreading with all his might.

Changkyun tries to school his expression into something less bitter and guilty.

Jooheon snorts and tosses a spool of thread at him. “I can read your body language with my _eyes closed_.”

Changkyun stomps his feet in the doorway before chucking his sneakers into their sneaker pile with a whine. He knocks the line of Hyungwon’s giant Doc Martens down like dominoes. It makes him feel slightly better. “That doesn’t even make sense!” 

“You’re casting off some dark miserable vibes, is all,” Jooheon says, biting off the end of the thread with his front teeth and holding his coat up for inspection in the light of his desk lamp.

“I sucked him off.”

“Who, Hoseok?”

“No. _Kihyun_.”

Jooheon drops the coat down onto his bed beside him. His mouth shifts into a disappointed pout. And Changkyun hates to see Jooheon disappointed. “Oh, baby, you didn’t.”

“It was fine! We were two consenting adults, I swear! But then at the end, he got all _weird_ again. Like he was _super_ into it, and then he was like _blah blah logic and don’t get your hopes up ya dweebus_ , and it was like we fuckin’ respawned.”

“Oh my god. You did the video game PVP bullshit with him.”

“Our relationship… _respawned_ , Jooheon.”

Jooheon hops down from his bed and makes quiet tutting sounds as he comes to wrap his arms around Changkyun’s shoulders like a hot, toasty marshmallow against Changkyun’s body. “Hey, shhh, it’s okay. I’m sure he’s just working through some shit. People have to move at their own pace, yeah?”

“I _know_ , but I’m so _ready_. I’m ready _all the time_ , and I don’t want to wait again,” Changkyun whimpers. “I really felt like I had him back.”

“You do, dummy. He’s just a little different. People change. Trauma changes people, baby,” Jooheon says softly into Changkyun’s hair, brushing his fringe away behind his ear where it’s overgrown to hang into his face.

“Trauma?”

“He oozes trauma,” Jooheon says, nodding. “Handle him gently, ok?”

“I’m not sure I know how,” Changkyun admits, puffing a self-deprecating laugh against Jooheon’s throat. “Everything about me is so…anti-gentle.”

“Just give him time. He’ll let you know when he’s ready.”

“What if he’s never ready?” Changkyun cries out miserably.

“Well, how long are you willing to wait?”

Changkyun presses his face into the clean cotton-scented t-shirt clinging to Jooheon’s chest. “I guess … forever.”

“Atta boy.”

 

“Call of Booty: Modern Whorefare has thusly been renamed to simply Call of Booty, so as not to seem derogatory,” Hakyeon announces, standing in front of the doors to the laser dome. The safety video has just finished running, and Hongbin has finished going around, breathalyzing everyone to ensure there will be no tipsy players in the game.

Minhyuk raises a hand. The crowd is waiting in their glow-in-the-dark gear with reflective targets over their chests, backs, and foreheads.

Hakyeon groans and rolls his eyes before replying, “Yes, Minhyuk?”

“What if I wish to reclaim the term ‘whore?’ Why must it be derogatory?” Minhyuk declares, patting his hands over the padded vest covering his torso.

“You can reclaim ‘whore’ on your own time,” Taekwoon grunts, waving for them to open the doors to the arena, his hands clutching the laser gun in a white-knuckled grip. “I’ve got frustration to let out.”

The garage-style rusty metal doors lift, and Hakyeon yells, “FIGHT LIKE HELL, MY CHILDREN!”

Changkyun hides behind Hyungwon as they creep into the dark arena. The only light visible is from the neon green, yellow, and pink of the glow-in-the-dark paint scattered around. There are splotches of it in indiscernible shapes on the tall heavy walls, guiding them, but it’s minimal light at best.

“I’m not good at video games,” Changkyun says, gripping Hyungwon’s hand tightly.

Hyungwon jerks away from Changkyun’s desperate death-grip. “I need my hands to shoot. This isn’t a game. This is war.”

“This is really triggering my fight or flight,” Changkyun hisses, his heart thundering heavily against his ribcage.

“Let it,” Hyungwon says, shoving Changkyun away from him and sprinting into the darkness, howling with rage.

Changkyun stands there, shivering in the darkness, hearing people shouting and firing off their lasers, hearing footsteps heavy on laminated flooring, hearing breaths echoing loudly in the empty spaces.

He starts through shadows, bumping into figures he can’t recognize and narrowly escaping their frantic firing of lasers in his direction as he retreats further into the maze of dimly glowing walls.

Changkyun has his gun held in front of him like a lifeline, and there’s suddenly a low beeping coming from Changkyun’s helmet. “HEADSHOT!” a tinny voice blares in his ears.

What the fuck?

Changkyun tips his head up to the second level, where he sees Kihyun’s body angled over the balcony railing, blowing off the tip of his gun like it’s smoking. Kihyun flashes Changkyun a confident smirk, like nothing happened yesterday that would make things awkward. Like, you know, jizzing on Changkyun’s face and then kicking him out.

Changkyun’s mouth opens, and he unleashes a primal cry, like he’s truly been shot in the skull.

Kihyun flinches on the balcony, looking for a moment like he wants nothing more than to launch himself the twentysomething feet down onto the base level to reach him. This comforts Changkyun slightly. Knowing Kihyun would cannonball himself over the railing to splat onto the floor at Changkyun’s feet.

Instead, Kihyun stands there, looking shell-shocked, and Changkyun gives him his best eyelash-fluttering grin, though he probably just looks like a dark figure cast in shadow doing absolutely nothing.

But, hey. He can do this.

It doesn’t have to be so serious.

If he wants to tease, if he wants to flirt, he can, right?

Just like before.

Like Jooheon said. Be gentle.

It’s not serious. He and Kihyun are just kids still.

Another shot is fired at Changkyun’s back, and instead of turning to check who fired it, Changkyun just sprints around the next corner.

He’s lifting his gun, prepared to fire, when he sees that there’s not one but two figures pressed up against the back of the next barricade.

“Hyungwon,” Changkyun blurts.

Hyungwon lifts his head from where he’d been tonguing Hoseok’s neck. “Oh. Sup?”

Hoseok turns around, Hyungwon’s thighs in his grip, Hyungwon pressed up against the tall neon pink barricade wall with his body all loose like he isn’t made of stale twizzlers. “Oh. Sup!”

“Dear Goddess,” Changkyun groans, hoisting his gun up at the ceiling triumphantly and firing off into space until he needs to reload. “Fucking _finally_.” His expression hardens, his mouth feeling full, like he’s burped his heart up onto his tongue. He can feel it beating against his hard pallet.  “Please leave now. Please leave. Take the dorm room. Take it all night. Please. I’m begging you.” Changkyun manages to walk close enough to tuck his dorm key into Hoseok’s back jean pocket, the impossibly tight fabric somehow stretching to allow both Hoseok’s rock-hard ass cheek and also the keyring. “I won’t come back until tomorrow at noon. Please go fuck on all my things. Please, I’m begging you. Soil every object in my possession, and I will _thank you_.”

Hyungwon blinks at Changkyun and then at Hoseok. “That was unexpectedly passionate and also totally disturbing of you.”

“Please. I need this. Hoseok, please go knot him, so he can _shut up and relax_.”

Hyungwon and Hoseok look at one another and then shrug. “Yeah okay,” Hyungwon says finally, un-koala-ing himself from around Hoseok’s massive tree-trunk body and lowering his feet to the ground.

Changkyun unleashes another primal scream.

“You wanna join or something?” Hoseok asks, looking concerned.

Changkyun looks at Hyungwon. Hyungwon narrows his eyes. Draws his finger over his throat as if to say _I could swallow you whole, digest you slowly in my stomach acids, watch your body disintegrate inside me, I, the snake, and you, the little egg._

“Nah, I’m good,” Changkyun blurts throatily, staggering backward. “You kids go have fun.”

Hoseok shrugs again and grabs for Hyungwon’s hand. Hyungwon grins, suitably pleased with himself and this outcome. Changkyun hears them sneaking through the emergency exit, startling the alarm to life.

Then there’s Hakyeon, voice clear as day even over the alarm, even over the shouting, the whooping, the lasers firing off like crackling fireworks: “Can none of you go one night without dicking each other?”

There’s a loud war cry of ‘no’s and then more laser sounds.

Changkyun huffs up the steps to the balcony, narrowly avoiding another four or five headshots along the way, and there’s a sweet crooning sound coming from the far right corner of the second floor. Something familiar and all at once new. Something bright and high and breathy like an open-mouthed hum. Like music caught somewhere between the larynx and the tongue.

And when Changkyun finds him, Kihyun is standing there, gun lifted, aimed right for Changkyun’s chest.

“You found me,” Kihyun teases.

“You wanted me to,” Changkyun replies, almost feeling the need to whisper, despite all the noise around them. He holds his own gun steady, pointed at the target dangling right in the center of Kihyun’s chest.

“Did I?”

“You were calling me. That’s the same sound you’d make when we were younger. When I got bloaty, gross stomach aches from eating an entire wheel of cheese with my lactose intolerance. When I got lost on scavenger hunts trying to dig up clearly made-up treasures that I didn’t realize were clearly made up, and you wanted me to find my way to you. When I…”

“Are you crying?”

Kihyun lowers his gun and steps closer.

“I just missed you so bad,” Changkyun says, wiping at his face with his forearms, his gun dropping to thud painfully against his thigh. “I’m sorry I was trying to force you into something. I just really fuckin’ missed you, Ki.”

Kihyun drops his gun, and it dangles from its wire at his side. He grabs Changkyun by the front of his sweatshirt and drags him forward against his chest, arms tight around his shoulder blades like he wants to crack every bone in Changkyun’s back at once. “I missed you too.”

“Did you? You never wrote me.” It sounds pathetic as he says it, but he means every word. All that angst from his teenage years spent without a response wants to free itself from his hippocampus.

“I didn’t want you to—I thought I was sparing you,” Kihyun sighs, breath warm against Changkyun’s ear.

He always liked being similar heights when they were younger, being able to align the entire front of his body to the entire front of Kihyun’s body, like he could fuse them back together where they’d clearly been cursed apart by some unknown, cruel force of nature.

He’d once wished Kihyun would grow tall and broad as an alpha, someone who could engulf him completely in limbs and muscle, like Hoseok. Like Hyunwoo. Someone so big and warm and wide that Changkyun could disappear in their arms.

But here in Kihyun’s arms, the two of them fusing together again, like a total eclipse when one incredible, inpossible force passes another and there’s that moment of completeness, Changkyun can’t believe he ever wanted that. Can’t believe he’d ever want to not fit so perfectly against someone that there’s no space between their bodies for even the thinnest light to pass through.

“I won’t ask anything of you after this Ki, I promise. But can you please kiss me? Just once? Then I’ll be done, I swear. I swear to the Goddess and everything she watches over.” Every word is forced from his lungs like a wheeze. It’s pathetic. Pitiful.

Kihyun blinks slowly, looking at Changkyun like they aren’t mere centimeters apart, like the tips of their noses aren’t brushing every time one of them breathes. “You could ask me for anything.”

“You’d resent me.”

“No, I couldn’t. I want to be able to do everything for you,” Kihyun says, their lips brushing lightly.

Something folds over itself in Changkyun’s gut, crests up into a tidal wave, has him parting his lips and whimpering. “I said we’d be friends. I need to give you time. Honey said to treat you gently.”

Kihyun grips the back of Changkyun’s neck, like scruffing a kitten, and Changkyun nearly goes limp against him. “I don’t need to be treated gently.”

“Don’t you?”

Changkyun can feel the heaving of Kihyun’s breaths as their chests come together with each inhale. He can taste the heat in the air, something wild and frantic. And it isn’t just Changkyun. Beneath that, there’s Kihyun. There’s warm riverbeds with clean spring water sifted through smooth stones, currents swelling up against fallen tree branches. There’s trees shedding leaves _en masse_ , hoisting their branches up to the sun with the weight of summer finally gone. There’s the wet cedar of the fishing pier, slick with algae, drying after a sudden storm.

“Why are you hiding from me?” Changkyun breathes, lips parting as Kihyun guides their mouths together. He gasps into it, the scent almost drowning him, and he can’t get air, he can’t get air, he can’t get enough of Kihyun’s lips, thin but plush against his own.

Kihyun presses Changkyun back against the railing, tall enough for a bar to press against his shoulders. Kihyun’s breath is coming erratically, his body shuddering. “I’m not hiding,” he says, gripping the railing on either side of Changkyun’s body with thick knuckles visible beneath the skin of his hands. His body presses in. And it’s so hot with all their padded gear on, but Changkyun just wants to feel Kihyun’s body.

“Please don’t run away again,” Changkyun pants, gripping the fabric of Kihyun’s jean pockets and holding their bodies tightly together as Kihyun explores the plane of his throat with his lips. “Please don’t. I need—I _need_ \--”

“Changkyun,” Kihyun gasps, lips against Changkyun’s jaw, and Changkyun can feel his tongue and teeth there against his pulse point. His scent gland. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. There’s something wrong with me.”

“Nothing,” Changkyun pleads, arching to try to press more of himself against more of Kihyun, if that were even possible. Touching Kihyun is like trying to catch something frightened and wild. Like trying to calm the open ocean. Like trying to bottle the sound of skin brushing accidentally in the dark. “You’re perfect, Ki. You were perfect before, and you still are.”

“And you’ve always been hyperbolic.”

“Speak a language I understand, please.” Changkyun knows it’s time to pull back now. To reel it in. He’s gotten his taste for the day, and he needs to tread quietly now.

Kihyun laughs against Changkyun’s mouth, and, as if their minds are tied together, says, “I don’t want to let you go.”

“About that,” Changkyun whispers, licking his kiss-swollen bottom lip. “I gave Hoseok my dorm key so he can finally knot Hyungwon, so…”

“So…”

“So…”

There are thousands of things Changkyun wants to say, but they get trapped at the back of his throat, and he offers instead, “Take me to IHOP?”

Kihyun collapses against Changkyun, and Changkyun can really feel how hard he is. How hard they both are. And Changkyun has never been able to say no to his own boner, but for Kihyun he’s going to do it.

“I want the pancakes with the cherries for eyes and bacon smile, please.”

“That sounds perfectly disgusting.”

“And you’re buying.”

“Sounds good. But, for now… Can we sit apart in the dark for a hot sec?” Kihyun says, fiddling with the crotch of his jeans.

“Good idea. I’ve had enough boners in IHOP to know they’re supremely frowned upon.”

“Every time you open your mouth, I regret every decision I’ve ever made.” Kihyun’s lips twitch at one corner, and he’s smirking again. And they could be kids again, chucking unevenly chopped bits of onion at one another over a poorly built campfire.

Changkyun squeezes Kihyun’s hand and then slips away to sit cross-legged against the far wall. “I’m gonna Google gross things like compulsory heterosexuality and earwax.”

“Please stop talking,” Kihyun begs, sitting five feet away from Changkyun on the same wall, his knees tucked up against his chest.

“Why, am I arousing you further?”

“Actually, you’re right. Please keep talking. My boner is shriveling like a snail under salt-assault.”

“Oh no, I’m hard again.”

“You can go sleep with Minhyuk,” Kihyun says, rising to his feet. Changkyun leaps and coils his arms around Kihyun’s legs. Kihyun bodily drags him to the edge of the stairs.

“I’m sorry that everything you do arouses me!” Changkyun cries out, just as the lights all come back on, as the noise settles and the game ends.

Somewhere, down on the bottom floor, Hakyeon leans into Wonshik and says, “When we graduate, I need you to forcibly hypnotize me into forgetting all of this.”

Kihyun smiles down at Changkyun, still wrapped around his legs like a love-struck jellyfish. “You’re lucky I love hash browns. Let’s go.”

Changkyun stands, and Kihyun twines their fingers together.

“And, uh… thank you,” Kihyun says, so softly Changkyun almost misses it.

He squeezes their entwined hands. “Don’t thank me. We’re pack. We’re always pack.”

 

 

 

 


	7. Christmas Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: SORRY IT TOOK ME LITERAL AGES TO UPDATE THIS. I struggled with how to make the climax finally happen tbh. But I'm really happy with what I ended up getting out. I think it's what these boys deserve. This is the last really plot-heavy (if you can call it plot) chapter, and the next two will mostly be fun pack college shenanigans. So enjoy. It's filthy.
> 
> And, as always, thanks to everyone who reads and takes the time to kudo and comment.

Christmas. Changkyun was lucky to have Christmas growing up, with his parents moving him among betas who love nothing more than standing in lines at the mall for fifteen hours among throngs of procrastinating shoppers and then gifting one another pairs of comical socks. 

Kihyun never had Christmas in his pack. Winter Solstice, sure. Which is almost the same, you know, minus the consumerism. But they were also crammed in a much-too-tiny cabin for fifteen hours, waiting for the Moon or something. But no presents. 

One year, Kihyun called on Christmas Eve, and Changkyun heard singing in the background and Kihyun heard singing in the background, and it felt like they were in the same room. 

Kihyun’s parents had sent him to the best pack camp up North, but he would return home after every summer, so far away from Changkyun. Their parents would allow them to visit one another during weekends or breaks from school on occasion, but the sound of Kihyun’s voice over the phone always just made Changkyun’s chest ache.

“It’s so loud,” Kihyun complained, once the prayers to whatever Moon Goddess or something had ceased but the carols on Changkyun’s end had not. 

“Sorry we celebrate with overflowing joy and not with ritual sacrifice--”

“It’s metaphorical sacrifice. We don’t spill any blood. And your holiday is an excuse to get drunk on spiked milk and--”

“Well  _ your _ holi--”

“I miss you.” Kihyun sounds breathless, like he’s squeezing the phone in his small, thick hands, huddled somewhere private, away from the crowd. 

Changkyun’s lips pursed tight, and he sighed into the phone cradled sweatily against his ear. Every inch of him replied, “Miss you too, Ki.”

 

Hyungwon and Jooheon have both gone home for Winter Break. Changkyun expected as much. They always do. Changkyun’s parents like to travel during the Solstice, during Christmas. He usually spends the break holed up with Hongbin in the library, feasting on garbage food from the dining hall. Or sometimes Hyunwoo will stay behind and let Changkyun stay with him, curled up at the foot of his bed like a needy house pet. 

But everyone has gone home this year. Which, like, good for them. He’s happy they get to spend time with their families. But it certainly doesn’t feel like Christmas when the campus is vacant and scentless. There isn’t even snow to pretend to frolic in for some good instagram pics that would make people think he’s having a swell time on his own. It’s actually nearly 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Changkyun’s coat has long been abandoned on the back of the campus quad bench he’s perched on to catch up on some reading for class. 

The trees are dry. Leaves cracked and brown. Changkyun hardly even had any time to enjoy the season change. It feels like college has somehow displaced him entirely from nature, despite being surrounded by it and people who worship it. There’s something about it. He’s always distracted. Parties, body chemistry, knots, whathaveyou. 

He breathes in. Closes his eyes. Imagines the summers spent beside a murky green lake. He kicks his feet and imagines soft stones rubbed smooth by river currents. He pushes past the scent of the campus dining hall cranking out burnt paninis and canned corn. Remembers the sensation of sunscreen-slathered skin beneath his lips, kissed hot by early afternoon sun. Remembers baking beneath that same sun while laying atop the muddy post-rain wooden docks. His skin was always a warm golden brown, especially dark on his knees, bent up toward the sun as he lay there each afternoon, and his face. He never washed his face nearly enough, always too distracted. It caught up with him later in a way it never caught up with his friends, and he has the scarred cheeks to show for it. 

Maybe it’s pure nostalgia that makes Changkyun feel like he’s somehow so detached these days from everything he used to hold as Most Vital, Most Precious. The feeling of rocky sand sucking his heels down as he stepped. The scent of algae latching onto his ankles as he slipped on larger stones by the banks. The touch of rough fingertips smearing globs of sunscreen on the apples of his cheeks. That breathless, free sort of joy that came with waking up at 4 am beneath a summer sky of unobscured starlight, shoulder blades pressed right up against a warm bare chest, knowing he had hours and hours and hours until the morning bells would ring, until that warm bare chest would stir and wake him. Hours and hours and hours until he had to roll over and press his face into sweaty, golden summer skin and complain about needing to move. Hours and hours and hours until he’d be kissed awake by chapped adolescent lips that would murmur, “ _ hey, get up, get up, you sack of rotten potatoes, get up you adorable sack of rotten potatoes--” _

“Hey.”

Changkyun looks up, and Kihyun is there, swaddled in a massive gray wool scarf that coils up even over his ears. Changkyun really just has the bridge of his nose and squint of his eyes against the wind to determine who it is. But Changkyun would know that dumb wrinkly forehead squint anywhere. 

“Oh, you--you didn’t go home?”

Kihyun shakes his head, squeezing the travel mug of coffee between his gloved hands. 

“You’re cold? It’s so warm for December.”

“I think you forget I am not from the North. Anything below 60 is frigid.”

Changkyun eyes the bag Kihyun has strapped safely to both shoulders behind him. “Should we...I mean...you’re headed to the library, right?”

Kihyun nods, so Changkyun grabs his backpack and coat from the bench. “Nothing says Christmas quite like the campus library.”

“Kihyun Yoo, was that a  _ joke _ ?”

Kihyun grins, holding open the library door for Changkyun to pass through. “You caught me. The holidays always bring out my inner fool.”

“Shame you were cursed with both an inner and outer fool,” Changkyun taunts, heading for the white marble staircase that leads up to the other library floors. The bottom floor is mostly just reference books and periodicals, with a spot for students to use school printers. 

The lady who mans the Information kiosk (and, yes, there is only one, since the other three don’t need to bother showing up during Winter break)  is on her way out to grab a late lunch. She asks if they need her for anything, and they shrug noncommittally Changkyun and Kihyun are, as she points out as they enter, “ _ the only kids [she’s] seen in days _ .” The heavy door swings shut behind her, and the place is silent and dim.

The second floor has rows of tables between the stacks, with barricades between the private desks, just to make sure everyone stays real damn quiet. Changkyun remembers his mother telling him about cubicles. A private work fortress made of carpeted cardboard to keep you from socializing. Like you can’t just scoot your chair back a bit. 

Kihyun beelines for the open tables by the mezzanine overlooking the vacant first floor periodicals, the ones where you are forced to make awkward random eye contact over anatomy textbooks with whoever sits across from you. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a pile of folders, neatly labeled with perfect tiny handwriting. 

Changkyun opens his backpack and tips it open over the table. Loose papers and notebooks flop out the way fishermen unload their heaping nets of struggling tunas. Kihyun quickly reaches to grab for his own folders and books, as if protecting them from the touch of Changkyun’s filthy ones. 

“Isn’t it funny how no one ever really changes?” Kihyun says, lips in a crooked sort of smile. 

“In this instance, I’m grateful for it,” Changkyun replies, smiling softly in return and taking the seat directly across the table from Kihyun. “It’s comforting.”

“In its own way, yeah. You’re right. It is comforting. In this instance.”

“Right. You know, that you can just disappear for a while and then come back and everything is still waiting for you.”

“Changkyun.”

“What? I didn’t mean you.”

Kihyun sighs as he neatly folds his wool scarf and places it on the empty spot at the table beside him. “Yes you did. And that’s fine. I deserve it.”

“You do, don’t you?” Changkyun can feel the bitterness he’d sworn he wouldn’t feel tickling at the back of his throat. Something he can’t wash away. Something he can’t pretend isn’t there, as it sinks tiny, tiny teeth into him. 

Jooheon had said to treat Kihyun gently. But how can Changkyun know to do that? How could he know that trauma is what infected his friend, his very best friend and made him vanish into the warm southern air? Changkyun can’t read words Kihyun never wrote, can’t hear words he never spoke. There’s nothing written on the planes of Kihyun’s face. No hints.

“I can’t read your mind, Changkyun. But I know you’re justified in being mad at me.”

“I can’t read your mind either, you know. And that’s what is most frustrating. Because for a long time, I really thought I could. For a long time, you and I shared that kinda shit. So I’d like to know what it was exactly that made you suddenly believe you couldn’t let me in anymore.”

That bitterness has climbed up into his skull. It’s pressing teeth into the backs of his eyes. They fill with hot, stinging wetness. 

“Did I do something? Did you just...decide you didn’t want me anymore and--and you didn’t know how to tell me? Just tell me that. Just tell me what changed, please?”

Kihyun bites hard at the inside of his cheek, causing the skin to suck inward, making his cheekbone look almost ghastly sharp. 

“Don’t make me talk about it just yet.”

Changkyun huffs out a laugh and gives a brief nod. He reaches for his headphones, hoping blasting some Linkin Park might distract him enough from his own angst. He can just revel in theirs. ~*~The magic of music~*~

“Changkyun--”

“It’s fine. I’m not going to force you to say anything. Let’s just get some work done.”

“I promise I will.”

“It’s  _ fine _ , Kihyun,” Changkyun groans, slapping his palms down on the hard tabletop. 

It’s then that the power goes out. 

In winter, the sun begins to set at 4pm, so there’s only a hint of the last dregs of afternoon sunlight attempting to reach their weak tendrils into the high chapel-like windows of the library’s top floors. The dim lighting provided by the overhead lights flickers out quickly. It’s nearly impossible to see, the only source of light coming from the flashing red campus emergency lights above their heads.

Changkyun screams. High and shrill and terrified. He can handle a haunted house. Ghosts don’t scare him. But sudden, penetrating darkness sure does. Especially when nothing bad ever happens here. 

“You okay?” Kihyun whispers, as if the sudden darkness implies he should be quieter. 

Changkyun feels around for his cellphone and shines the flashlight across the table at Kihyun. He looks flustered, eyes pinched tight at the corners. 

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just odd, isn’t it? It isn’t storming or anything.”

“Campus is pretty old. I’m sure it’s just a weird fuse thing. I’ll go check downstairs.”

Their phones buzz on the table, that disconcerting staccato vibration that signals a campus alert.  _ CAMPUS IS ON LOCKDOWN, PENDING INVESTIGATION. PLEASE STAY PUT.  _

“Welp,” Changkyun huffs out an uncomfortable laugh. “So much for that, huh. Now you’re stuck here with me, I guess..”

“I wonder if there is some mass campus prank we weren’t let in on,” Kihyun says. 

“Must it be a prank for us to be alone together somewhere?”

Kihyun snorts some kind of laugh/scoff combo. “We can be alone anytime.”

“Then why aren’t we?” 

“Changkyun.”

There’s an agitation twitching and fluttering against Changkyun’s ribcage. Something urgent and frustrated and relentless. His body needs answers, even if his brain knows it needs to wait for the right moment. There is no right moment for Changkyun’s inner Omega. It has been rejected, and the rejection burns through him and out of his lips. “Everyone keeps chastising me like I’m  _ handling _ you wrong, but no one will tell me why. How am I supposed to act normal when none of this  _ feels _ normal to me at all? You used to want to  _ touch me  _ for fuck’s sake.”

Kihyun stares, face illuminated by the bright cell phone flashlight. His lips are parted like he’s moments from speech but nothing comes out. 

That agitation beats its angry wings harder against Changkyun’s ribs, and he can barely breathe. His body is just a shell to contain this agitation, this unquenchable, insatiable  _ need  _ to fix this. He promised himself to Kihyun ages ago, and Kihyun promised back, and now there’s something keeping them apart, and Changkyun needs to fix this. “You...you want us to be comfortable, but I can’t  _ get _ comfortable because I’m treading over these eggshells every time I see you. My instinct is to reach for you and touch you and have you touch me, Goddess, I just want you to touch me, but I have to ignore that and put up these--these barricades between us for your safety and no one will even tell me why. I feel like I’m fighting just to be around you, Ki, and I just...I just want to know why.”

“Because I’m scared.” It’s said so softly that Changkyun has to strain to hear it.

“Of me?”

“Of never being right. Never being enough. When Hoseok told me about your first heat, and I realized I couldn’t be there for you, I figured it would be better for you if I just...let you go. You stopped writing, and I figured you were happy somewhere, released from waiting for me.”

An alarm sounds somewhere farther away on campus. 

“That’s stupid.”

“Don’t tell me my feelings are stupid, Changkyun,” Kihyun defends, wrapping his arms around his own torso as if trying to trap everything inside. 

“I was there when you ate those clearly poisonous black berries after Hoseok dared you. I was there when you got so violently ill that camp custodians refused to clean it up, and handed Hoseok and I the mops to clean our own bunk. Clean  _ your _ mess. I was there when you tried to shave your upper lip for the first time without any help, and you looked like you’d just either committed pretty disgusting splattery murder or you drank actual human blood. I was there when--”

“That was before, though,” Kihyun interrupts. “Things changed. We grew up. You found a pack, and I was so separate. I felt like I couldn’t connect anymore. Hoseok would tell me about how you two were planning to come here together, and I wanted so badly to join you. But I felt like I would be so disappointed. I felt like you would look at me and regret everything.”

Changkyun can’t help staring. The bright white light from his phone catches on the sharp planes of Kihyun’s face, and they’re so similar but so different from the angles he remembers being there. Kihyun’s cheeks are much hollower. His skin much paler. His jawline sharper. But the way he looks at Changkyun is the same. Like he’s a blank crossword puzzle. Given no starting letters. Very vague clues. Which is silly because Changkyun has always been willing to hand Kihyun all the answers if he’d just ask.

“I don’t need you to knot me,” Changkyun blurts, heat rushing up under his cheekbones. “Really, I--I don’t. If that’s what this is about.”

“Betas don’t join packs, Changkyun.”

“You’re not a beta. You’re Kihyun. And you’ve always been pack, before any of us presented as anything. I could never be disappointed looking at you. I crave you. You were the first person I ever wanted to give myself to, and nothing has changed.”

“I want to believe you, Changkyun,” Kihyun sighs, turning his face to the window, the red glare of the emergency lights making his skin look pink.

“How do I get you to take those walls down?” Changkyun pleads, body hot and irritated and frantic. “Tell me what I can do for you, please. Please, Ki. I want you.”

Kihyun’s breath catches audibly, but he avoids Changkyun’s gaze. 

Which just makes Changkyun feel even more panicked, and sweat beads against his temples, wetting the baby hairs on his forehead. Something primal and needy claws its way up Changkyun’s larynx and when Changkyun opens his mouth, it forms this shaky Omegean wail. The urge to be what Kihyun needs battles with the knowledge that maybe Kihyun doesn’t want him anymore, even though he once made it clear that Changkyun was his ever desire, and Changkyun’s body decides that the best way to handle this fight is to cry. 

Kihyun looks flustered and alarmed. He stands, hands shaking at his sides. “Kyun, what’re you--”

Changkyun’s body is trembling and hot and he can’t stop crying. “Do you...not want me? You keep making this about me, but I’m telling you how badly I want you. Nothing is different for me. So...do you not want me anymore?”

Kihyun’s lips part as a low crooning growl sounds from deep in his chest. It’s meant to comfort. Something an Alpha does when his Omega is in distress. Changkyun wants Kihyun to come to him. Sing those Alpha sounds right into Changkyun’s lips. “Please don’t think that. Of course I want you. I’ve wanted you since I could fathom the concept of wanting anyone.”

Changkyun holds his arms out, and Kihyun scrambles out of his chair to kneel between Changkyun’s knees on the floor. He reaches up, gentle, oh-so gentle, and thumbs away the sticky tracks of Changkyun’s tears. 

“Baby,” Kihyun croons, and Changkyun shifts in his seat, trembling. “I will always want you.”

Changkyun catches the scent of rain-soaked moss and snow melting from creek beds. His hands cup the sharp planes of Kihyun’s jaw and pull him up enough to touch the tip of his nose behind Kihyun’s ear. And it’s so potent now, as Kihyun fists the front of Changkyun’s sweater in his small but strong hands. It’s there: crisp cedar bark breaking off into his palm, pinecones tossed into a fire pit that send up warm, sweet-smelling smoke. 

“Goddess, Ki, you smell so--”

Changkyun falls out of the chair after leaning too far over, and he collapses on top of Kihyun on the floor. It’s a rough, old carpet beneath them, but Changkyun needs to be closer. He tugs the collar of Kihyun’s sweater down to nuzzle his face into the deep well of his collarbone. It’s intoxicating. Everything is heightened. The heat of Kihyun’s skin against Changkyun’s lips has him arching his hips in and down, seeking friction, more of that heat. 

“Kyun, shit. Kyun, stop. I think you’re in--”

Changkyun mewls, hands finding skin beneath the hem of Kihyun’s sweater, and his palms catch fire on it. “I’m not...not due for  _ weeks _ and--”

But it’s there. The unmistakable feeling like his bones have hollowed out and refilled with hot, hot need. Like his skull is swimming with that warm toasted-pine smoke. Like nothing but skin against his skin and something spreading him open and filling him up will cool this need. Being trapped here in the dark with his body’s forever-Alpha must’ve triggered it. 

He shifts his hips down again, and, yeah, he’s absolutely soaked. Kihyun grips at Changkyun’s hips, tight, trying to hold him still. “I--”

“If you tell me to stop, I will,” Changkyun says, seeking reassurance as Kihyun’s fingers dip under Changkyun’s sweater to grasp at the soft skin of his waist. “I’ll go to the infirmary when the campus lockdown ends. I’ll never bring it up again, and I’ll stop. I’ll stop if you tell me. But be honest with me.”

Changkyun’s spine hits the carpet. For a split second, Changkyun believes he’s been tossed away, rejected, but his upset whine catches in his throat when Kihyun brackets his hips with his thighs and bears down over him. 

And it’s like Changkyun has lived a life of Almosts with Kihyun. Sure, they’ve kissed. They’ve touched. But Changkyun’s body knows this moment. The Almost Moment. In his dreams, Changkyun could always breach the Almost. But Kihyun’s breath is loud and harsh in the vacant, dark library, and Changkyun is writhing against the horrid carpet beneath his back, and this is their Almost Moment #Infinity, and Changkyun will do anything to get it finally.

“I wanted it to be you,” Changkyun says weakly, reaching up to thread his fingers into Kihyun’s hair (in desperate need of a trim). “I love Hoseok, but--”

“It’s okay,” Kihyun says gently, cupping Changkyun’s cheek with his clammy palm. 

“No, I really wanted it to be you. You have to know how badly I wanted it to be you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kihyun murmurs, brushing Changkyun’s fringe from his eyes. His pupils are blown wide as he searches Changkyun’s face and meets his gaze finally. “Not really.”

“Kihyun, I want you so badly,” Changkyun whimpers, trying to drag Kihyun down by his hair, but Kihyun is somehow refusing and staying upright over him. “Please.”

“I feel weird,” Kihyun admits, flexing his fingers in toward his palms, making and unmaking a fist over and over. “Maybe since I’ve never really been around someone in heat...like this.”

Changkyun manages to sit up a bit beneath Kihyun, coiling arms around his neck, hips rocking up against Kihyun’s body from beneath him. “What does it feel like?”

Kihyun shakes his head slowly, eyes wide, pupils dilated so wide and dark and open. “Wild.”

“I know you don’t believe me,” Changkyun breathes, nuzzling in against Kihyun’s throat and licking up the warm, sweaty column of skin before nipping at his earlobe, “but you smell so fucking good, Ki. You smell so hot and smokey and--”

“But I can’t. I ca--”

Changkyun presses his teeth in against Kihyun’s pulse point, just a soft dull bite, but Kihyun’s chest rumbles like something large and predatory. The sound sweeps through Changkyun’s blood, thick and rushing, and Changkyun must be  _ gushing _ because his jeans are soaked beneath him. 

It’s the smell of home. Not their actual home, but the place that brought them together. The place where, despite their vastly different actual physical homes in vastly different actual geographic regions, Changkyun and Kihyun were so incandescently happy together. 

Changkyun keeps rutting up against Kihyun, gripping his biceps tight enough to bruise, just whining high in his nasal cavity. A puppy with a treat held right over its nose but out of reach. Forbidden from opening its jaws and snapping it up. 

“Kiss me, Kihyun,” Changkyun pleads, shaking so hard that his very cells must be slamming into one another chaotically at the very core of his being. 

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” 

It’s rushed. Because the two of them have years to make up for, and Changkyun sure as hell does not have the patience nor the forethought to take his time. It feels so good, the chapped skin of Kihyun’s lips against his, like they’re adolescents again, huddled together in the camp showers under a spray of lukewarm hose water to rinse off the mud of the riverbank. Like they’re pressed up against the mildewed wood of the shower stall, frenetically clawing at one another’s backs as they kissed, despite the cobwebs full of massive spiders over their heads and the threat of fellow campers opening the stalls beside them. 

Getting lost. In the sensation of each other. 

Which is a much more refined way of saying  _ really Goddess-damn horny _ .

Changkyun doesn’t know why he asked for a kiss and not for Kihyun’s fucking dick inside him, but he’s made his bed and now must lie in it. 

“Kyun, you...” Kihyun dips his head down behind Changyun’s ear, and his ears have always been so sensitive, making him squirm and shriek foolishly, but Kihyun’s breath against his skin is such a nice relief from the burning sweltering force of heat in his blood. “I can smell you. Fuck, it’s so thick. You’re so wet.”

“Yes,” Changkyun gasps, trying to arch his neck up to get more of Kihyun’s breath against him. It’s intimate in a way he’s never considered before. Feeling the air from Kihyun’s very fucking lungs. He wants to feel that breath everywhere. “For you. Always so fucking wet for you, Kihyun. You have no idea, I,” he breaks off as Kihyun presses the heel of his palm against the front of Changkyun’s jeans, “I-- _ ah _ , fuck. After I presented, it was like I was always waiting for you when my heat would come. I always knew when it was coming because I’d have a dream about you. Always just you and m-me.”

“What were we doing in your dream, baby?” Kihyun asks, and that nickname has Changkyun trembling more as Kihyun grinds his palm against Changkyun and sucks hard at his throat, his jaw. 

“You’d pin me down and take me like I belong to you,” Changkyun croaks weakly, trying to get more friction, the slick between his legs making everything both incredibly hot and terribly unpleasant. “Please, Ki. I need...my jeans...I’m so  _ wet _ .”

Kihyun looks down between their bodies and reaches for the button of Changkyun’s jeans. “I’ll take care of you, baby.” His voice is rough and dark, calming like a black sky full of stars.

“Yes, yes,  _ oh fuck _ yes,” Changkyun blurts, lifting up to help Kihyun ease his damp jeans and boxers down, and Changkyun kicks them off to the side, not caring where they land, not caring that his heat scent will seep into everything. “Please take care of me. Please, please, you know I’m yours.”

Kihyun grips Changkyun’s legs, hoisting his knees to his chest, so he’s open and exposed and  _ dripping _ onto the horrid library carpet. “That’s it, sweetheart. Goddess, you look so good like this. So gorgeous. You’ve always been so fucking gorgeous, Kyunnie.”

Changkyun shakes his head against the floor, but his body betrays him by gushing more slick. Just the sound of Kihyun’s voice like this, so knowing and self-assured and comforting like it used to be before all of this, when Kihyun was Changkyun’s declared future Alpha, makes Changkyun’s whole body react. His cock is hard and pink and leaking against the fold of his scrunched stomach, pooling precome. 

Kihyun runs the pad of a finger over Changkyun’s perineum and down to his hole, staring at it in fascination. “I’ve never fucked an Omega. In my head, they were all you. I wanted them all to be you. And, fuck, I was right. You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Fuck, look at you,” he mumbles, slipping his thumb easily inside and massaging the walls of Changkyun’s body like he  _ knows _ , like he knows everything about him and his body and what he needs. 

“Kihyun,” Changkyun moans, trying to wrap his legs around Kihyun’s body, pull him closer, pull him inside like he desperately needs. “Now. Please, just. Just  _ now _ .”

Kihyun stops moving his thumb inside him, slaps Changkyun’s hip, and jerks one of his legs back up to his chest. Changkyun gasps, arching into the sting from Kihyun’s palm, light as it was. “Shit...Is that okay? I know you...I mean you told me once that you like pain but I--sorry, I shouldn’t have--”

Changkyun grasps for Kihyun’s wrist, where it’s holding his thigh up to his chest. “It’s good. I like it. Thank you for asking. I like it a lot, Ki.”

Kihyun nods, breathing in shakily. “Good boy. Keep yourself up and open for me, baby.”

Changkyun winds his forearms under his knees and holds his legs spread, loving the way Kihyun looks at him like this. Like he’s edible. Like he’s more than food. He’s the only sustenance Kihyun could ever need. Like he’s the only thing in the world that Kihyun wants and needs. 

Another alarm blares outside, and both of their phones buzz hard against the tabletop, but neither of them make any move to investigate. 

Kihyun shifts down onto his belly, nosing in against Changkyun’s inner thighs, so close to where Changkyun needs him. He takes his time with it, despite how his breath trembles out from between his lips against Changkyun’s bare, wet skin. “I’ve never...you smell  _ so good _ , Changkyun,  _ fuck _ .”

“What do I smell like?” 

Kihyun’s tongue laps from Changkyun’s balls down to his hole. “Something nutty? I can’t really…”

“Nutty?” Changkyun coughs out a fit of giggles in a haze. “A bit too on the nose, don’t you think?”

“Goddess, I don’t  _ know _ . It’s everything. It’s like...warm summer air when there’s no breeze. It’s stifling and hot and bright.” Kihyun licks at him again. And again. Like he can’t stop. He presses his face in, tongue breaching Changkyun’s hole, and Changkyun thinks he may have screamed. “Shhh, quiet, baby. You’re so loud.”

“No one’s even here. Again, again, don’t stop,” Changkyun begs,  _ demands _ . “Feels so good, please.”

Kihyun acquiesces, but it probably has less to do with Changkyun’s pleading and more to do with the way Kihyun’s fingers are digging into the meat of his thighs hard now, clenching like he can’t control himself, his breath hard and ragged and out of control in a way Changkyun has never heard before. He fucks his tongue into Changkyun and holds him spread open with a rough grip that could bruise, but Changkyun feels so good. 

“I’m gonna come, Ki, I’m--”

Kihyun moves one hand between Changkyun’s legs while his tongue fucks into him, and he runs just one finger gently up the shaft of Changkyun’s needy cock, and Changkyun is coming. He’s coming hard and fast, abs quivering as he arches up and releases all over his own belly in a wet messy puddle that slides down his ribs and onto the carpet. 

Kihyun keeps licking at him, and Changkyun feels crazed at the sensation of Kihyun’s tongue on his skin. Every inch of him feels like it’s disconnected, like he’s just made up of blood and the tingling, burning feeling of needy, needy heat. 

“Touch me,” Kihyun begs throatily, fumbling with his belt, tearing his jeans and briefs down and off, and Changkyun wants his mouth on him. Changkyun wants to feel Kihyun’s cock thrumming with blood on his tongue. He wants to make Kihyun feel better than he’s ever felt in his fucking life. 

Kihyun is standing, and there are carpet burns on his elbows and knees from planking his body between Changkyun’s legs as he ate him out on the floor. Changkyun crawls on his knees, guiding Kihyun into one of the wooden study chairs. Kihyun spreads his legs, and Changkyun kneels on the floor between them, two-handedly stroking at Kihyun’s cock. His thighs are pale and warm, dusted with dark hair down by his knees. 

His cock is so thick and warm, pulsing against Changkyun’s fingertips. Changkyun takes him into his mouth, as far and deep into his throat as he can manage. Kihyun isn’t as long as others in their group, but he’s fat and fills Changkyun’s mouth so perfectly. Changkyun taps Kihyun’s hip and rolls his eyes up to meet Kihyun’s gaze. He waits. 

Kihyun plants his hands on either side of the wooden chair seat and rocks his hips up. His cock slides in, gagging Changkyun so good, and he starts a rhythm of it. Changkyun’s eyes water, lips burning where they’re stretched wide around the girth of Kihyun’s skin, and it’s so good. Kihyun tastes so good and thick and warm, and Changkyun wants to make him feel so good, better than he’s ever felt in his life. Kihyun fucks his mouth until his hips are stuttering, and he fists a hand into Changkyun’s hair and yanks him away. He’s panting hard, hands shaking, as he grips under Changkyun’s armpits and hauls him up. 

“On the table, baby. On your back.”

Changkyun can’t move fast enough. He shoves their books away onto the floor and climbs up onto the heavy wood study table. Kihyun would normally huff and bend to pick up the scattered papers, but this Kihyun grabs Changkyun’s ankles and tugs him down a few inches so his ass is just barely hanging off the edge. 

“I don’t have anything,” Kihyun says, fingers digging into Changkun’s waist as he pins him down to the tabletop. The wood presses hard into Changkyun’s spine and tailbone, but he still can’t feel anything but need. 

“What, like a condom? Ki, I’ve been on the pill for like ten years,” Changkyun laughs, nudging at Kihyun’s back with one socked foot. 

“O-Oh, right, fuck, I’m just...you’re so sexy, and I almost just fucked right into you without thinking. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Do it. Fuck me, Ki.” Changkyun lifts his legs, wraps them around Kihyun’s waist, both of his ankles digging into the meat of Kihyun’s bare ass to urge him forward. “Fuck me so good, Ki. Like I know you can. Like I’ve always known.”

Kihyun presses the tip of his cock against Changkyun’s hole, and just that mere touch makes Changkyun feel moments from coming again. He’s in heat, so it’s not completely absurd to come twice in the span of maybe ten minutes, but Changkyun wants to hold on a bit longer. Wants to look into Kihyun’s eyes as he spills inside him. 

“Just do it, Ki, please.”

Kihyun’s hips snap forward, and he buries himself inside Changkyun in one swift motion. Changkyun grips the edge of the table above his head and cries out. 

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Kihyun gasps, grabbing the meat of Changkyun’s hips and pulling out to thrust back in quickly. His hips snap so hard, so swiftly, slapping against Changkyun’s ass like he can’t control himself, and Changkyun has never felt so hot, so hot and good and well taken care of. 

“Yes,” Changkyun moans brokenly, fingers aching as he holds the edge of the table tightly. “Like that, like you own me, like you know I’m yours.”

“You are mine, Changkyun. You’ve always been mine.” Kihyun stares down at where their bodies are connected, groaning out, “Fuck. Your  _ ass _ , Kyunnie. So gorgeous. So wet.”

Changkyun cries out again. “Bite me, Ki.”

Kihyun pulls out, flips Changkyun onto his front so he’s just bent over the edge of the table, his cock sliding against the laquered wood surface, and he fucks right back into him. The line of his chest against Changkyun’s back is sweaty and swelteringly hot, and it feels so intimate, just that skin-on-skin touch. Changkyun braces himself on the table and rolls his hips back the best he can with limited range of motion.

And then Kihyun’s teeth clamp down on the back of Changkyun’s neck as he fucks him, and Changkyun screams. It isn’t hard enough to break skin, but Changkyun will certainly have a mouth-shaped bruise there, and it will be Kihyun’s imprint on him for a week or so, something Changkyun has wanted since he could fathom  _ desire _ like this at all. 

“Changkyun, something is...” Kihyun growls, and Changkyun feels it. Kihyun’s cock swelling at the base, tugging at his rim as he keeps thrusting slowly. “Oh...Oh fuck, Changkyun, I--”

“Give it to me, Ki. I want to feel it all.”

“I’m scared, I’m…” Kihyun wraps his arms around Changkyun’s middle, squeezing like he’s trily terrified, and Changkyun presses back against him.

“It’s okay,” Changkyun coos, easing Kihyun back gently, wincing as he helps Kihyun pull out. Changkyun is in heat, so his body screams at him when he suggests, “We can stop. Do you want to stop?” The Omega that paces the cage of Changkyun’s body, waiting for moments like this, is truly furious, gushing out more slick and urging Changkyun to climb Kihyun like a tree.

Kihyun cups Changkyun’s cheeks, fingers trembling, breath trembling, entire body trembling. “I’m way too old to be presenting, Changkyun, and I’m really fucking scared.”

“You’re Alpha, Ki. You’ve always been Alpha. Maybe it was just trapped inside you, but it doesn’t matter. Forget about all that. It’s okay. It’s okay to be scared. We don’t have to do anything. We don’t.”

“No,” Kihyun growls from the depths of his core. “You’re mine. You’re mine, and I’m going to fill you. I’m going to finally fill you so everyone knows you’re mine.”

Changkyun smirks at the tone of Kihyun’s voice, the sound of Alpha Voice, and he lays back onto the table. Lifts his legs up to his chest again and holds himself open so Kihyun can see the slick wetness of him. “I’ve been fucked a lot, Ki. How will you make me yours?”

Kihyun’s chest rumbles like there’s gravel caught in his voice box. “Were you this wet for them, baby?” He slips the head of his swelling cock against the slick spilling from Changkyun’s hole, teasing it over Changkyun’s sensitive skin. Changkyun’s skin breaks out in goosebumps, and he shudders. 

“Hmm, I’m not sure. You’d have to ask them,” Changkyun taunts, just to hear Kihyun growl again. 

The head of Kihyun’s cock slips past Changkyun’s loose, slick rim, and both of them gasp aloud. “You told me you always wanted it to be me. I heard you. And look at you. Filthy. Coated in slick for me. I can feel it gushing around my cock inside you. Went into heat in the fucking library during campus lockdown just to get me to fuck you, didn’t you?”

Changkyun shivers, hips jerking up needily. 

Kihyun drags him down the table. “I can finally knot you. That’s what you want, isn’t it? What you’ve always wanted?”

Changkyun shakes his head against the table. “I’ve always just wanted you. Your hands and your voice and your stupid wrinkly walnut chin and your skinny little legs and your fat fucking cock-- _ ah _ \--”

Kihyun fucks back into him, his swelling knot catching on Changkyun’s rim for a second before being sucked inside. Kihyun just rocks his hips a bit, letting the knot press against Changkyun’s prostate, just brushing it over and over as it swells and swells. 

“Oh fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _ ,” Changkyun whimpers as he’s stretched wide. “Keep going, please, please, I’m so close, I’m so so close. You’re so thick, Ki. Thicker than any knot I’ve taken. Feels so fucking good.”

Kihyun doesn’t look like he could stop if he wanted to. He plants his palms on either side of Changkyun’s head on the table and ruts his hips back and forth, not really able to thrust, now that his knot is almost fully formed inside Changkyun. “This is insane. You feel insane. I feel insane.” 

Changkyun giggles, the world feeling hazy around him. Everything is Kihyun. “Take me, Ki. Take what’s yours.”

Kihyun groans, nosing at Changkyun’s throat, leaving kisses and sucking bites at any skin he can reach. His stomach rolls over Changkyun’s cock as he ruts his hips over and over, and Changkyun is coming again, he’s really coming again within the span of maybe twenty minutes. His vision whites out, and he might be crying actual tears, but he can barely feel anything except Kihyun finally spilling into him, filling him and filling him and filling him and holy shit is he  _ still _ coming oh Goddess he’s still coming--

“Baby,” Kihyun pants, and there are definitely tears on Changkyun’s cheeks, but they are both Kihyun’s and his own. Mixing as they spill down his skin and onto the table with whatever other fluids are there. “My baby.”

“Yes,” Changkyun whines, wrapping his arms around Kihyun’s neck and pulling him closer, as close as he can get him, wanting to feel the way their bodies align so perfectly. Kihyun can’t be anything but the moon to Changkyun’s sun. Their bodies a full complete fucking solar eclipse, and Changkyun couldn’t be any happier to be completely fucking eclipsed like this. How could the sun not celebrate the way the moon fits so cosmically fucking perfectly against it? The universe could never be wrong that way. “Always, always, Ki. Alpha, my Alpha.”

 

Kihyun is trapped inside Changkyun for a good fifteen minutes before the swelling goes down enough to pull out. Changkyun sags completely against the tabletop, body aching in a way it has never ached before. Like Kihyun reached inside him and touched places that have been dormant for Changkyun’s whole life. 

Changkyun keeps laying there as Kihyun runs to the library restroom on wobbly legs to grab an armful of wet and dry paper towels. He helps gently wipe Changkyun’s tummy and thighs with the rough brown paper towels, handing Changkyun a new towel to wipe at his ass. Changkyun slowly moves up onto his legs, unsteady and shaking, still crying a little from the force of coming around a knot. Kihyun’s knot. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to stop crying. It just keeps spilling out of him. With every breath.

Kihyun wipes off the table. Even dumps a little hand sanitizer onto the wood to try to erase the scent, though it’s probably useless. The whole library smells like sex. Like heat sex. Like Changkyun. Like Kihyun.

Who smells like he’s always smelled to Changkyun. Like comforting campfire smoke and something herbal and warm. Like the home they made together years and years and years ago before they realized how permanent and irreversible the structure would be.

After they get their clothing back on, they huddle under the table and kiss some more. Changkyun sitting in Kihyun’s lap and licking into his mouth. Mewling against his lips. The heat is barely there anymore, having been quelled by being literally knotted mere moments after it began. 

“Maybe we should check our phones finally,” Kihyun suggests. 

Changkyun shakes his head, yanking at Kihyun as he slips away to grab their phones from the tabletop. Changkyun is starting to feel how cold the power-less library is now, without the heat of their bodies together. 

“Looks like they thought there was an intruder on campus, but it was just someone’s dad with a toolbelt that they thought was a gun,” Kihyun says, reading the notifications from campus security aloud. “Well that’s both terrifying and comforting.”

“I knew it was nothing. Now come back and smooch me.”

“ _ Sure _ , you knew it was nothing. That’s why you went into a panic heat. Let’s at least go back to a dorm. I’m frozen,” Kihyun replies, grabbing the collar of Changkyun’s sweater beneath the table and yanking at it to get him to move. 

“And then we smooch more?”

“Yeah,” Kihyun laughs, looking lighter and glowing more than Changkyun can remember him ever looking. Like he’s finally found himself. 

The lights come back on.

 

The Mu Chi Alpha house is empty as they step inside and crank the heat. There’s a massive evergreen tree in the living room, with a red velvet tree skirt beneath it. 

Changkyun quickly sheds his coat and sweater and lays himself on the ground beneath the tree. He holds his arms out. 

“Merry Christmas, Kihyun.”

“Are you saying you’re my gift? But I opened you before Christmas Eve. Doesn’t seem right.”

Changkyun grabs a string of loose shimmery gold garland and yanks it from the tree. He coils it around his neck like a leash and holds the free end out to Kihyun. “You can open it again now. I wrapped it up all nice for you, see?”

Kihyun laughs and kneels down beside Changkyun beneath the tree, by the radiator spilling warm air at them. Kihyun glides his rough palms over Changkyun’s stomach and up to where there are dark bruises on his throat from Kihyun’s mouth. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Changkyun shakes his head, stroking Kihyun’s knuckles with his thumb. “Don’t apologize. That’s silly. You’re here now. And we’re all gonna be here for you. Forever, yeah?”

Kihyun’s eyes are filling with tears as he searches Changkyun’s face for a lie. Of course there isn’t one to be found. Changkyun has been waiting for Kihyun since the day they met. 

“I don’t feel any different,” Kihyun admits sheepishly. “Are you sure I knotted? It wasn’t a fever dream?”

Changkyun glances quickly down between his legs. “My asshole has seen better days, Kihyun, so I can guarantee you that you very much knotted. I’m gaping.”

“Please don’t. Ew. Stop. What’s wrong with you?” Kihyun laughs, swatting at Changkyun’s chest. 

“You did it to me! Take responsibility!  _ Gaping _ , Kihyun. My ass is a black fucking hole.”

“I take it back.” Kihyun waves a hand in front of Changkyun’s eyes. “Sleep now. Nothing happened. No gaping whatsoever. This was all a dream.”

Changkyun grabs Kihyun’s wrist and brings his fingers to his lips. He kisses each fingertip and sucks Kihyun’s pointer finger into his mouth, wrapping it in the warm wetness. “You sure about that, Alpha?”

Kihyun’s body shudders, and he shoves Changkyun’s shoulder down onto the velvet tree skirt. “I’m glad this house is empty for another three days, Changkyun, because I’m gonna knot you so much. I’m gonna knot you under this stupid tree that has nothing to do with any sort of Christian God and nothing to do with his birthday or birthplace, which is a literal desert where there are no trees like this..”

Changkyun rolls his eyes and sighs. “Stop talking, you’re ruining it. Go back to the part about knotting me.”

Kihyun looks completely earnest as he says, “But like, can we just talk about this a second? Why do they cut down a tree and bring it inside? They can’t decorate it outside?”

“I don’t know! It’s a combination of traditions from other cultures and something about Martin Luther thinking about Jesus as he looked at an evergreen tree! Who cares! Please just kiss me before you start ranting in that awful weasley voice you use when you know you’re right about something.”

Kihyun sits back on his haunches, still straddling Changkyun on the tree skirt. “The holiday just doesn’t make any sense!”

“It doesn’t have to make sense! Just fuck me under this tree so I can tell everyone I was your perfect little gift!”

“I need to look this up now, sorry,” Kihyun says, grabbing his phone from his pocket. He holds Changkyun down with one frustratingly strong hand against his chest, and he one-handedly searches up the history of Christmas. 

Changkyun sighs and starts humping up against Kihyun’s ass in annoyance. “I regret falling in love with you all those years ago. I could have fallen for a really buff but stupid Alpha who would spoil me rotten and give in to my every whim.”

“Where would the fun be in that? Now shush, I’m learning. There are 4 billion Google results for me to peruse.”

“You’re not going to react to the part about me loving you?”

“I don’t have to. I can feel it. I could feel it when I touched you. We’ve always loved each other that way. Without saying it.”

“And?” Changkyun nudges.

“And--oh, wow, no one can tell me anything for certain about this Goddess-damn tree!”

Changkyun smacks Kihyun’s cheek lightly. “Come back to me, please. Look at me. I’m sweating. My heat is back. Please fuck me on this tree skirt before I die.”

“You’re not gonna die. You don’t die of heat.”

“No, but I  _ can _ die of suffocation. I’m going to hold my breath until you kiss me, so better be fast.”

Kihyun stares at his phone, eyes scanning the screen quickly. Changkyun puffs out his cheeks, lungs already protesting as he holds his breath. His eyes water. His chest sucks inward, seeking air. Changkyun wriggles around, whining. 

Kihyun huffs, giving up as he tosses his phone at the couch behind them. He pries Changkyun’s lips open with his own. Changkyun gasps in the air from Kihyun’s very lungs, and then he’s laughing. 

They’re laughing beneath the stupid tree, and Changkyun doesn’t know much about Christmas but he thinks this must be what they talk about when they talk about miracles. That feeling like everything that was once pure and good is now rotten. Every last shred of something like hope scattered to the wind, only to return in one swift, sudden gust, before you can even really fathom what’s happening. Loose, separate feathers carried on a breeze that billow together into wings that can finally beat when it seemed like they would float endlessly alone.

Miracles. Yeah, Changkyun thinks he might understand a little better now. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. ABC/Birthday/Moving Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: sorry this chapter is short. I really just have a couple of ideas left that I want to do with these idiots in this universe, so these are more like...collections of drabbles/scenarios. Thanks to everyone who has stuck around for this universe and my slow updates. I truly love and appreciate you. If you have fun ideas for the last chapter of what you'd like to see these freaks get up to, please comment or find me on twitter @likesatellitez   
> (also I didn't edit or beta this because I'm so tired so...ignore any errors you see lmao)

“I don’t think you quite get the premise of the party,” Changkyun says, head dangling off the side of Kihyun’s bed in the Mu Chi Alpha house attic. “It’s anything  _ but _ clothes.”

“Underwear is hardly clothing,” Kihyun says, fingering the hem of his navy boxer briefs with little sailboats on them. “Right?”

Hoseok, from beside Changkyun on the bed, sighs and shakes his head. “It’s made to be worn on the body, so it counts. Be more  _ creative _ , Ki.”

“Whose idea was this party anyhow?”

“Hongbin. It’s his favorite party of the year. You want to bring it up with him, hm?” Changkyun taunts.

Kihyun visibly recoils at the thought. Changkyun smirks. Hongbin is the quiet-but-deadly sort of threat. A cyanide capsule of a person, slipped between your teeth with a deft, sexy tongue. You have no idea what’s hit you until you’re foaming at the mouth and the room smells of burnt almonds as Hongbin walks away into the night, leaving you to die with just the memory of his lips. 

“What am I supposed to wear then? Pool floaties and toilet paper?” Kihyun whines, staring down at his own bare thin torso, hands cupping his nipples like a skin coconut-bra. 

“That’s a good start, love,” Changkyun replies, feeling the blood dripping heavy into his cheekbones and temples the longer he stays flipped upside down off the side of the bed. “Last year I wore rolls of condoms taped together like a loin cloth.”

Kihyun looks at Hoseok, hoping for some kind of denial of Changkyun’s claim, but Hoseok just laughs and smacks Changkyun on the forehead jovially. 

“Oh yeah that was  _ awesome _ . You won most sexually-creative costume.”

“That shouldn’t be a thing,” Kihyun sighs. “They give you too much positive reinforcement for this behavior, baby.”

“Mm,” Changkyun hums in acknowledgment. “They know I need it.”

“What you need is a good spanking,” Kihyun huffs, picking up a pirate bandana from the Swashbucklers and (Consenting) Ship Wenches party last week. “Does this count? It’s fabric, but it’s not meant to be worn as  _ clothing _ .”

“Sure, but go back to the part about spanking,” Hoseok croons, rolling onto his stomach. Changkyun crawls on top of him and starts to mimic riding his back like a rodeo bull rider. 

Kihyun continues to ignore them, trying to tie the bandana around himself somehow. He ends up just wrapping the skull-crested fabric around his dick and turning around with a flourish. Changkyun is spanking Hoseok’s ass as he bucks up underneath him like a rodeo pony. They both stop as they notice Kihyun finally looking at them.

Kihyun’s dick gives a twitch beneath the jaunty bandana. 

“You saw nothing.”

 

Hyungwon walks in sometime after three, and he’s got a deck of cards taped to a trash bag, which is tied around his narrow waist. 

“You did cards last year,” Changkyun accuses. 

“A crowd favorite,” Hyungwon retorts, making a seat out of Hoseok’s plush ass on Kihyun’s bed, his back against the wall. “Is Kihyun really wearing that bandana around his dick? I don’t think Hakyeon will approve.”

Kihyun scoffs deep in his throat, a gorgeous trembling of phlegm that shoots right to Changkyun’s loins. “No one is giving me any assistance here. This is the best I’ve got at the moment.”

“Your dick looks like a pirate flag at half-mast. Did your Captain die?” Hyungwon teases, eyeing the little flap of fabric waving in the breeze from the fan. It’s springtime now, a balmy sixty-five degrees fahrenheit, made especially balmy in Kihyun’s third-story attic room. 

Kihyun snatches the bandana off, and Changkyun is so proud of how comfortable he is around the others now. He stands there, fully nude, arms and legs and throat tanned from days spent sprawled on the quad green in a pile of other warm bodies. Feeling sweat dripping from knees bent over stomachs and arms thrown over backs. 

“Why would we want to wear things that aren’t clothes? Clothes were  _ made _ to be put on bodies.”

“Have a sense of adventure, Baby Alpha,” Minhyuk says as he trips into the room. His hips and crotch are wrapped in bright yellow Caution tape like a trendy bodycon skirt. He piles onto the bed and splays out on Changkyun, head pillowed on the soft of Changkyun’s lower belly. 

“You look absurd,” Kihyun whimpers, waving a hand in Minhyuk’s direction. “You guys really want me to do that to myself?”

“Sure do.”

“Yepp.”

“Absolutely.”

“What’s the question?”

Kihyun sighs and starts rummaging through his desk, bare ass on display as he bends over slightly. Wolf-whistles blast from the bed behind him. 

“I will come over there and spank  _ every single one of you _ ,” Kihyun hisses. 

“Oh,  _ please do _ ,” Changkyun says, wriggling beneath Minhyuk in just Kihyun’s Rilakkuma boxers. “Do Hyungwon first.”

Hyungwon makes to swat at Changkyun, but Hoseok just sits up and folds Hyungwon up like a canvas beach chair and holds him firmly in his lap. “Now, now,” he sing-songs, petting Hyungwon’s messy bed hair with a big veiny hand, Hyungwon looking every bit the reluctant gerbil being manhandled by a less-than-gentle toddler. “Let’s play nice.”

Kihyun pauses for a second, as if deep in thought. He crouches down beneath his little shambly desk and retrieves a dust-coated box. A dust-coated box of Monopoly. He swats the lid off and plucks out a handful of crumpled Monopoly dollar bills. 

“Oh,  _ daddy warbucks _ ,” Changkyun moans.

The corner of Kihyun’s lips quirks up, and he lets loose the handful of fake dollars onto the massive pile of people on his bed. “That’s right....bitches.”

  
  


“The prince demands payment upon entry,” Hoseok declares from the doorway, waving in Changkyun’s direction, where he’s pressed up against the edge of the hotel jacuzzi, bubbles nearly tall enough to fully engulf him. 

Changkyun leans a bit more over the ceramic edge of the hotel tub, lips pursed comically. His eyes are red-rimmed with Nip, cheeks flushed from the heat of the bath water. “I demand,” he repeats, words low and slurred.

Jooheon huffs a sigh, the kind of sigh that carries weight of years of frustration and love all coiled up in one sigh-ball. “You still pretend to be a prince on your birthday, huh?”

Changkyun tips his cheek onto the tub edge and purses his lips. “Pretend?” He blinks slowly, confused, pleased. 

Jooheon steps in, nicely bleached 4-star hotel towel wrapped around his waist, and he squats in front of Changkyun. “Happy birthday, Prince. We love you very much.”

Changkyun hums, excessively pleased, running his tongue over his bottom lip. “C’mere, honeybun.”

Jooheon drops his towel and clambers into the tub, pressing his soft pink kitten lips to Changkyun’s, and from the other corners of the tub, there’s a series of deep, long exhales. Kihyun holds Hyungwon on his lap in the tub, Hyungwon’s cheek tipped onto Hyunwoo’s shoulder beside them. Minhyuk has his arms up on the corner of the massive tub, watching in amusement as Jooheon scoots closer to Changkyun, thighs rubbing together under the bubbles. 

Changkyun pulls away, panting hotly between their bodies. “I love...birthday. I love...friends.”

Hoseok laughs, finally climbing in last, puffing slowly on a lit Nip joint. “Oh he’s slipping hard.”

“Who is our good baby, hm?” Minhyuk coos, reaching a sudsy hand over to brush the top of Changkyun’s cheekbone. “Did so good this year, bringing us all together, yeah?”

Changkyun seems reluctant to release Jooheon, still panting, eyes glossy. “My pack. Need you all.” Jooheon dives back in for more kisses, and Changkyun whimpers deep in his chest. 

Hoseok smiles fondly, and tugs Jooheon out of Changkyun’s lap for a moment. “Let him think, you.”

Changkyun reaches wet hands out over the surface of the tub water, clenching and unclenching his fingers in every which direction. “Mine. Mine? Right?”

Kihyun pulls Changkyun over, licking hotly into his needy mouth while Hyungwon sucks at his tan throat from Kihyun’s lap. “All yours, baby.”

“Want all of you,” Changkyun groans, rutting his cock against Kihyun’s thigh beneath the water. 

“Shhh, we’ll take care of you, yeah? Want us to take care of you?”

Beneath the water, Hyunwoo teases over Changkyun’s slick hole with two water-wrinkled fingers. “Good boy, Changkyun. Such a good boy for us.”

Changkyun’s breath hitches in a sob. “I love you. I love you all.”

“We know, baby. And we owe you everything,” Hoseok says, joining Hyunwoo under the water as they fuck their fingers inside Changkyun in turn. Changkyun can’t tell whose is whose, just knows they’re pressing up against his walls like they want to claim every inch of him. 

Hoseok helps guide Changkyun over Hyunwoo’s cock, easing him down by the waist until Changkyun is circling his hips needily, fully seated over him. 

Changkyun comes on Hyunwoo’s cock, with five pairs of hands on him. He’s scooped out of the water, Kihyun, maybe, and carried in a soft swaddle of towels over to the double king beds pushed up together in the center of the hotel room. 

They lay him down gently, all six pairs of hands and lips now. Changkyun doesn’t know whose is whose and truly doesn’t care at the moment. This is his pack, and he’s so loved. 

He falls asleep splayed across Hyungwon, Jooheon’s tummy acting as his pillow, despite the beds coming with clearly enough pillows for them all. Hoseok is curled up on Hyunwoo, the wet hand towel they’d gotten from the bathroom earlier to clean up the mess of Changkyun’s ass and thighs still clutched in his hand. 

Kihyun wrinkles his nose at that. Too many fluids. Far too many fluids. 

He and Minhyuk are sat together on the hotel armchair, just looking at the pile of exhausted, sleeping bodies with endeared smiles. 

“Do you think we’d still be us without him?” 

Kihyun knows that answer immediately. Doesn’t even need to think about it. “Not at all.”

Minhyuk hums in agreement, thumbing what must be cum from his own cheek. “Mm, yeah. Probably not.”

“Definitely not.”

Changkyun snuffles awake on the bed, blinking blearily over at the floor lamp still on and dim beside the armchair. He grumbles, voice wrecked and gravelly, “Now sleep. Sleep now.”

Minhyuk laughs, using Kihyun’s legs to leverage himself out of the armchair. “C’mon. The birthday boy demands.”

Kihyun glances at the alarm clock, flashing neon green numbers at them. “His birthday has been over for 57 minutes.”

Changkyun wriggles and huffs. “ _ Now _ .”

Kihyun laughs under his breath, moving over to the edge of the bed. He leans down and in, brushing his lips against Changkyun’s sweaty, clammy forehead. “Okay, Kyunnie.”

Minhyuk makes a whip-crack sound as he flicks off the lamp. Before he can stop it, Minhyuk shoves at Kihyun’s shoulders, making him topple onto the pile of bodies in the bed. Everyone startles awake and hisses angrily at Kihyun.

“For my birthday, I’m making you all  _ respect me _ ,” Kihyun whispers in frustration, wiggling to find an open space for his body atop the mattresses and blankets and pillows. 

“Shut up and sleep.”

“Tomorrow pancakes,” Changkyun whispers into Kihyun’s neck, coiling around him like a love-struck tentacle monster. 

“Whatever you want,” Kihyun says, grabbing Changkyun’s hands and bringing them around his body, intertwining their fingers against his stomach. “Whatever you want.”

 

Hoseok has an armful of five boxes, standing in the doorway. “Where do we want these?”

Kihyun points to the open kitchen, where there’s nothing but a pile of boxes and a massive wood table he built to fit 7. It’s less of a table and more of a giant farmhouse slab of wood nailed together on a couple of cheap IKEA legs, duct-taped just in case Kihyun’s two semesters of woodshop weren’t quite enough to ensure the stability of the thing.

“Hyunwoo and Jooheon are coming up with more stuff in a few.”

“Does anyone have the bed?”

Changkyun, unpacking the bubble-wrapped stacks of plates, stills. “Oh shit. The bed.”

“Kyunnie,” Kihyun says slowly, patiently. “You did place the order, right?”

Changkyun spins around, pursing his lips. “I…made a mistake?”

Kihyun looks over at Hoseok. Hoseok looks back. For a second, they communicate nonverbally. 

And then Changkyun takes off running. 

“Oh, you are in  _ so _ much trouble, Changkyun Im,” Hoseok screeches, a predator quick on the tail of its prey, leaping over the couch and cornering Changkyun against the wall. 

“No,” Changkyun gasps, “I’m not caught yet.” And he slips between Hoseok’s legs on the floor and takes off again. Kihyun is waiting in ambush in the hall. Changkyun rushes straight at him, and Kihyun bends at the knees, grabs Changkyun at the waist, and throws him up and over his shoulder. 

Changkyun screeches. 

“Got him!” Kihyun yelps, carrying Changkyun back out to the living room as he wriggles uselessly against Kihyun’s shoulder, punching at his back. “If you knew what was good for you, you’d be going nice and limp right now, baby.”

“I never know what’s good for me, that’s  _ who I am _ ,” Changkyun protests, shrieking as Kihyun swings him down onto his back on the couch. Hoseok is there, flipping him onto his stomach and tugging his sweatpants down to his knees. 

“You had one job, sweet Changkyunnie,” Hoseok says, holding Changkyun in place with strong grasping hands on his hips. “Order. The. Bed.”

Kihyun lands three successive slaps to Changkyun’s bare ass. “Order! The! Bed!”

“I was distracted! One of the Overwatch dudes is gay now! I had to explore!”

Kihyun has no response to that. Just another round of three spanks. Changkyun’s ass is flushed pink and blotchy, and Changkyun whimpers. 

“Try a better excuse, love,” Hoseok says, smirking at Kihyun as Changkyun ruts his ass up in the open air. 

“I...was...uh…”

“Too slow,” Kihyun taunts, spanking him hard between the cheeks. 

“You’re gonna make me all wet on the brand new couch,” Changkyun whines.

“Golly, we wouldn’t want that, you know, since this is the only bed for all seven of us at the moment. You know, because  _ you forgot to order it _ ,” Kihyun says, watching as Changkyun leaks out between his thighs as Kihyun lands another hard spank on his left cheek, watching it bloom pink under his palm. 

Kihyun is two fingers deep when Hyungwon and Minhyuk unlock the front door. 

“Uh...the delivery guys are here?” Hyungwon mumbles, staring at Changkyun’s bare ass. “Maybe put him in the bathroom while they bring the bed up?”

Hoseok and Kihyun blink in confusion. “The...bed.”

“Yeah, you know, the place where we’re all gonna sleep?” Hyungwon says, like they’re idiots. “Fuckin’ knotheads, the lot of you.”

From beneath them, Changkyun utters a small, “Oopsie.”

Hoseok looks at Kihyun, who has yet to remove his fingers from the confines of Changkyun’s slick butthole. “Oh we got  _ so _ played.”

Changkyun arches his hips up. “That’s right, Knotheads. Played  _ again _ .”

Kihyun removes his fingers and wipes them on the small of Changkyun’s back. Hoseok stands and pushes Changkyun so he flops over the edge of the couch and onto the floor. 

“Fuckin’ brat.”

“We’ll never learn.”

“So...the delivery guys?”

Kihyun sighs. “Yeah, whatever, send them in. This place smells like sex already.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t feel the need to mark all the surfaces,” Hyungwon scoffs, helping pluck Changkyun off the floor and tugging his sweatpants back up. “Alpha perverts.”

“Excuse you, it was Hyunwoo’s idea to fuck in all the rooms,” Hoseok declares defensively. “Head Alpha needs to know the space is ours.”

“Right,” Hyungwon drawls sarcastically. “Head Alpha getting Eiffel Towered on the fire escape by two twinky Omegas is truly the instinctive Alpha way. Our ancestors rejoice.”

Minhyuk swats at the back of Hyungwon’s head. “You were one of those Omegas, so let’s not complain, hm?”

“Who said I was complaining? This is just how I talk.”

“Let’s not taint our new den with all this bickering,” Hoseok says, trying to be reasonable. 

“Speaking of  _ taint _ , though,” Changkyun says, glancing at the door. “Do you think we have enough time for a bit of--”

“Ki, please control your...whatever he’s supposed to be,” Hyungwon says. 

“Think if we run the shower, they won’t hear--no, that’s a dumb thought, I know Changkyun only gets louder when he knows people can listen,” Kihyun sighs in resignation. “C’mon, baby.”

“Are you gonna make me scream into a loofa again?”

“It’s the only way.”

There’s a series of knocks on the door again. “Uh, delivery? We’ve been standin’ out here for a while now?”

“Oh, they sound nice,” Changkyun says, spinning back around. 

Kihyun grabs him by the scruff of the neck. “Nope. Leave the nice delivery Betas alone, Kyunnie. You can torment the neighbors later, okay? We’re gonna be here a while anyhow.”

“A while like forever?”

Kihyun shuts the bathroom door behind them, caging Changkyun in against the wood. He cradles Changkyun’s soft scarred cheeks in his palms. “Mm, a while like forever.”


End file.
